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THE CHILDREN OF FRANCE 

AND THE RED CROSS 



The Children of France 

and 

The Red Cross 



By 

June Richardson Lucas 

{Mrs. William Palmer Lucas) 



With Seventeen Illustrations from Photographs 



inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least 

of these my brethren, ye have done it to me. 

— St. Matthew, 25:40 



New York 

Frederick A. Stokes Company 

Publishers 






Copyright, 1918, by 
Frederick A. Stokes Compant 



All Rights Reserved 



StP 26\^o\o 



To 
"W. P. L." 



INTRODUCTION 

On August 12 , 1917, the National Red 
Cross organized its work for the women and 
children of France umder the Children's Bu- 
reau of the Department of Civil Affairs in 
France, with Dr. Wm. Palmer Lucas, Pro- 
fessor of Children's Diseases at the University 
of California,, as Chief of the Bureau. Dr. 
Lucas' work in 1916 for Mr. Hoover in Bel- 
gium, where he made a careful health survey 
of the Belgian children for the Commission for 
Relief in Belgium, brought a wide and valuable 
experience to the French problems. 

Mrs. Lucas accompanied her husband to 
France, and for ten months worked with him 
in the organization and establishment of the 
American Red Cross work for the children. 

Many formal reports of the work have been 
issued by the National Red Cross Headqiuir- 
ters. Many splendid accounts of the scope 
and magnitude of the work of the American 
Red Cross in France have been published by 

vii 



viii Introduction 

the Press. This book, made up of the daily 
journal letters written hy Mrs. Lucas during 
those ten months, has an unique value for the 
American people. It is an intimate, tender 
picture of the way in which our great National 
Relief Orga/nization meets, with a warm per- 
sonal touch, the most poignant tragedy in 
France today, the devastated lives of brave 
women and little children. 

Henry P. Davison, 
Chairman, Red Cross War Council 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



The conquerors! 



Frontispiece 



^ 



A group of old women at Evian who have lost 
everything ...... 

A happy reunion ..... 

Supplying Jean with warm clothing 

"Learning to forget" at Chateau des Halles 

A group of children at Evian, as yet unknown and 
unclaimed ...... 

A boy at Evian mutilated as a result of a loaded 
pencil given him by a German soldier . 

Ch&teau des Halles 

Christmas dinner — ^with plenty to eat . 
Jules, the "saint" of Chateau des Halles 
Bath hour at Chateau des Halles. One of our 
frightened cases ..... 

All posed for her picture .... 
Madame Gillet-Motte, who has cared for 3000 chil 

dren ....... 

Dr. Murphy and Dr. Manning feeding under 

nourished children .... 

Children of the school canteens of Paris, supplied 

with extra food by the A. R. C. . 

The great responsibility .... 
Waiting for some one to come for her . 



6 

6 

14 

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48^ 
60 '^ 
80^ . 
86 • 

92 "'^ 
110 

140 ^ 

148^ 

152^' 

174^ 

188 



/■ 



THE CHILDREN OF FRANCE 

AND THE BED CEOSS 



The Children of France 

and the Red Cross 

Evian, France, 
September 28, 1917 

I PROMISED to write about the rapatries at 
Evian; well I'll make a beginning. 

Rapatries are easy to define but most diffi- 
cult to describe ; indeed that generalization fits 
a good many situations in France to-day, but I 
Want to tell you about the rapatries, and I'll 
begin with a definition. 

They are the people; old men, old women, a 
few young women, children all ages, babies — 
a few, that the Germans are sending back into 
France through Switzerland. These people 
have been in either Belgium or Germany since 
the Germans took their villages. Now, as win- 
ter comes on, these many mouths to feed must 
be gotten rid of, and so the Germans are send- 
ing back all those they are unable in any way 

1 



The Children of France 



to use in factory, trench, or agriculture. That 
is the definition of rapatries. 

They are coming into France at Evian-les- 
Bains on Lake Geneva, two trains a day, 
bringing five hundred at a time. And they are 
leaving Evian daily, in special convoys, to the 
assigned destinations in the interior of France. 

The little station at Evian gives you a pic- 
ture, no, a realization, of what war can mean 
to the civil population that even a devastated 
village fails to give. The arrival of the train 
is most dramatic. It comes slowly into view 
and the crowd of rapatries on the platforms 
begins to cheer, and those in the train crowd 
the windows and shout and wave their hands 
calling, "Vive la France! Vive la France 1" 
The doors of the train are eagerly opened by 
nurses, our ambulance men, government aides 
and members of the local committees who are 
helping, and the train empties quickly. The 
old women with their precious bundles are so 
cheerful it breaks your heart. They try to 
smile and look ready for the new demands. 
The old men seem more depressed. There is 
a finality about it all for them that you never 
forget. The children are dirty and tired, but 



And the Red Cross 



excited and eager to see what is going to hap- 
pen next. 

The sick and the feeble are taken to the am- 
bulances in wheel chairs and on stretchers, and 
our American Red Cross men have a way with 
them that helps so much with these weary peo- 
ple. They put them into the ambulances, and 
a big bus takes the smallest kiddies, and off 
they go down the little winding street to the 
Casino. The rest of the crowd walks down. 

The sunset train load get a wonderful wel- 
come from their beloved France — the great 
splashes of pink in the soft sky, the distant 
hills deep and green, the blue waters of the 
Lake below reflecting all the glory of the sun- 
set, and they feel it. A sweet faced Sister said 
to me as we came down in the ambulance: "Oh, 
it is so beautiful — my France must be saved!" 

At the Casino the weary people find the big 
cheerful room full of light, and the color of 
the flags everywhere helps to make them real- 
ize that they are home at last. The hot meal 
is ready for them and they take their places 
quickly, and very soon the warmth and kind- 
ness of it all reaches their tired hearts and they 
begin to smile and talk to each other or to you. 



The Children of France 



After a little, the band, made up of rapatries 
who are detailed in Evian to help, begins to 
play some gay stirring French air. The chil- 
dren laugh at first, but the older ones cannot 
bear it and you see many tears. Then the 
Prefet of the District speaks to them in a 
friendly stirring fashion, welcoming them to 
their country once more, and with all the ten- 
derness of the French language, speaks of their 
sufferings, of the sufferings of France, of the 
bravery of their soldiers, of the final victory of 
France. "Vive la France," he shouts in clos- 
ing, and those homeless people respond with a 
cheer that blinds and chokes you. You won- 
der how they can, and yet you see that they 
must. It helps them to go on. Then comes 
the playing of the Marseillaise. They can- 
not sing at first — it sounds like a great sob 
from a heart-broken people, but the ringing 
"Marchons, Marchons . . ." becomes a cry of 
victory. 

The balcony above is a most interesting 
place. It is the children's place. While the 
older people pass into the big room adjoining 
to go through the long careful process of reg- 
istering, the little ones are taken up to the 



And the Red Cross 



balcony, checked, and left there to be washed 
and brushed and amused. There are many 
tears at first; they fear to be separated from 
their mothers, but the nurses are so friendly 
and so kind, and the boxes of glistering toys 
on a low table quite convenient for small fin- 
gers, are so tempting, that the battle is soon 
won. There are rows of little mattresses on 
the steps of the balcony that have clean pads 
and fresh little pillows where sleepy or tired 
children can rest. But it is too exciting for 
most of them. 

That balcony is rather a critical spot in the 
whole care, for here is the grave danger of 
contagion most evident, the skin lesions, the 
dirty heads, the vermin in their clothes — and 
it is here that the American Red Cross will 
begin to help by cooperating with the dispen- 
sary just under the balcony, in more care in 
selection of the children and cleaner methods 
in handling them, than have been possible to 
obtain in the hurry of this daily rush of caring 
for one thousand people. 

The registration is so carefully done and it 
is so important, you must know about it. The 
big circular desk at which some two hundred 



Tlie Children of France 



government clerks sit, is arranged alphabeti- 
cally and the people pass along in line; there is 
no hurry. Each rapatrie is talked with care- 
fully and kindly, and many stories are listened 
to. This registration bureau is also in receipt 
of many inquiries from relatives and friends 
who are making every effort to get in touch 
with their own as they come through ; and each 
rapatrie's name is instantly referred to that 
section of the registration, and in a few min- 
utes you may see the telegram or letter deliv- 
ered to a sweet-faced woman or a trembling 
old man, that tells them they are claimed by 
one who knows them and cares. You find 
yourself longing so for many more letters and 
telegrams than there are. You cannot bear 
the disappointed look, the sort of dumb resig- 
nation that is in many faces. After their reg- 
istration they pass on to another room, and 
there they are assigned to their lodgings for the 
night. 

The dispensary sends the sick men and 
women and children to the different hospitals 
and here is where help is needed. So the 
American Red Cross has opened an acute hos- 
pital of two hundred beds for children. 




A GROUP OF OLD WOMEN AT EVIAN WHO HAVE LOST EVERYTHING AND 
ARE UNCLAIMED. THE FRENCH GOVERNMENT CARES FOR THEM 




A HAPPY REUNION. SICK MOTHER IN BED HAD FOUND HER BOY AT 

EVIAN AFTER WEEKS OF SEPARATION. HER OLD F.\THER AND 

MOTHER FOUND HER THERE TWO DAYS LATER, AFTER A SILENCE OF 

MANY MONTHS 



And the Red Cross 



The Casino slowly empties; the volunteer 
workers fall to and clean the great room ready 
for the morning; the tables are laid, and it is 
long after midnight when the last worker goes. 

The little village quiets down. It was clear 
moonlight last night, as I walked back to our 
little Hotel des Quatre Saisons and stood for 
awhile on the terrace looking across at the Con- 
vent Clarisses. The facade of the chapel stands 
high above the wall and there in the moonlight 
stood the figure of the Christ with a little 
child in His arms. The pure white of the stone 
figure, with a great cross above, seemed start- 
lingly full of meaning. Back in the quiet 
quadrangle the old and sick rapatries, full of 
their weariness and suffering, slept perhaps, 
and dreamed of the loved village left so long 
ago. There was a great feeling of shelter and 
safety in the quiet sky above the dark roofs 
and the white figure seemed to be guarding the 
old convent. On the gateway was written: 
"The Patronage of Jeanne d'Arc." Perhaps 
she saved France once ? 

As I watched, suddenly from the shadowy 
courtyard the figure of a Sister stepped quickly 
out into the light of the street and went hur- 



8 The Children of France 

riedly away into the night. I waited. In a 
few minutes the Sister came back with a priest. 
He limped badly ; they could not walk so fast ; 
the moonlight shone on his cross above his heart 
and the white flaps of the Sister's hood. They 
disappeared under the low archway. In a few 
moments I saw a light in the room above the 
gate. The old priest came close to the window 
and knelt in the full light of the lamp, his hands 
before him with his rosary held high. I knew 
he was kneeling at the foot of a bed; I could 
see the white cover. The little Mother Supe- 
rior I had seen earlier stood near with her hand 
over her eyes. I could not see the dying ra- 
patrie, but I knew that all the comfort this 
world can give was being offered. It was a 
long time before the room was darkened again ; 
then the old priest came slowly out and went 
down the winding street in the moonlight and 
his shadow looked like that of a giant against 
the convent wall. The figure above seemed 
clearer. 

This morning about eleven I saw the end of 
the little scene of last night. The bells began 
to toll and from the sunny courtyard under 
the archway bearing that magic name, came 



And the Red Cross 9 

the sad little procession — two little altar boys, 
one carrying the cross, and the old priest in 
his white robes. The chanting was just peace- 
ful as the little procession of friends and fam- 
ily of the dead rapatrie walked slowly behind 
the hearse. The Mother Superior stood long 
at the gateway looking after them. It was all 
very real and very sad, these old people reach- 
ing their beloved country in time to die. One 
of the workers told me that 30 per cent, of the 
old have died in the first month after their re- 
turn. 

The children are so pathetic too, many of 
them without their mothers, just sent along in 
a crowd in care of the older women, and some 
of them are too little to know their names and 
the old people have forgotten; they come from 
a certain village and that is all that is known. 
And many, many of these children are sick and 
diseased, and the arrival in Evian of about 
five hundred children daily presents a most 
tremendous problem. 

Our Children's Bureau is to take charge of 
the medical end of it; and with an acute hos- 
pital of two hundred beds and several con- 



10 The Children of France 

valescent hospitals near, we are going to help 
those plucky French people with a task they 
have already undertaken with vigor and fore- 
sight. 



And the Red Cross 11 



Evian, France, 
September 29, 1917 

The morning train came in at a most chilly 
hour this morning — at seven o'clock, A heavy 
mist hung over the hills and the station was 
like a tomb, but the rapatries cheered just the 
same. They were so glad to get out of the 
train after three days of travel. There was a 
boys' school from Laos about a hundred little 
chaps of all sizes, and tired and dirty as they 
were, they sang their school song lustily when 
they gathered on the platform. That boys' 
school cheered me up; the future of France 
looked strong and hearty. Those blue caps 
above their shining young eyes gave me a 
sense of solidarity, of future security. There 
was a convent school of girls also, in charge of 
five Sisters, — about sixty young girls. They 



12 The Children of France 

did not seem so happy, but frightened by the 
experience. They clung to the Sisters, who 
kept their little brood together as they went 
off to the Casino. 

I started down the street with a boy of 
fourteen who had been digging trenches for 
the Germans for the last five months. He 
looked delicate, probably tubercular, or he 
would not have been allowed to go, I think. 
He was much interested, as they all are, at 
finding Americans at work. I suppose they 
have been told by their captors that we are not 
going to do anything about this war. Well, 
the first thing that gi-eets the rapatrie's eye out- 
side the little station is a row of ambulances 
marked "American Red Cross." 

This morning was full of interesting inci- 
dents. One old man who had started to walk 
down from the station with the young lad and 
me, gave out before we had gone very far, so I 
persuaded him to wait for an ambulance to 
come along and pick us up. He was a very 
bright little old man with a sensitive face. He 
was all bundled up in an old French armj^ over- 
coat that had been given him at the Swiss 
border. I could see that he was very proud of 



And the Red Cross 13 

it. He told me he had three sons in the French 
army, and that if he could only find them he 
would be cared for. His story was most pa- 
thetic. In the flight from Lille he had be- 
come separated from his wife, and in his ef- 
forts to find her the Germans had taken him 
prisoner. They held him for two days and 
then he escaped to the woods. After hiding 
there for two days, hunger forced him out on 
the road and the first humans he met were three 
Boches. To his amazement, as he put it, "the 
miracle happened," and they gave him bread 
and let him go. 

I wish I could reproduce for you this eager 
old man. He hated to admit that he was tired, 
and cHmbed into the ambulance most reluc- 
tantly, but he was really very weary, and so 
anxious to find out whether he would find a 
message from his sons. I found myself almost 
as eager as he was, and when we did find a tele- 
gram from his son in Paris waiting for him at 
the Casino, I assure you we both wept for joy. 
I have an old army button I am treasuring. 
He asked me to cut it from his coat and keep 
it to remember his "two miracles" by. 

There were so many sick children this morn- 



14 The Children of France 

ing — whooping cough and bad throats seemed 
to predominate. Really it makes you shud- 
der, the possibilities of epidemics and the op- 
portunity for the spread of disease through the 
interior of France. 

Diphtheria has given us all one dreadful 
fright but that has been checked now. It is 
impossible to give you any idea of the size of 
this problem here; from the point of view of 
public health, I doubt if there has ever been 
a situation of larger scope. This little town 
on the very edge of France is receiving a thou- 
sand people daily, and these people depleted 
and worn out from privation and hardship. 
About five hundred of the daily thousand are 
children, who show the effects of three years 
of dirt, limited bathing facilities or none, lice, 
skin lesions of all kinds, beside the low food ra- 
tions on which most of them have been living. 
All these conditions lower their resistance, as 
the doctors say, and they are under par. The 
above statement does not mention the tuber- 
culosis to be found in many of them, but it 
does show the absolute necessity of helping 
in this medical situation here; and the Amer- 
ican Red Cross is so glad to be here where 



And the Red Cross 15 

its Children's Bureau finds one of the great- 
est opportunities to serve France. 

But you don't want any theories about the 
situation, you want to hear about the people; 
you are quite able to form your own conclu- 
sions from the facts I give you. 

This evening's convoy brought a bit of evi- 
dence against the enemy — a child of fifteen 
with a year old Boche baby in her arms. The 
little mother looked so sick, you felt that was 
why she had not been held; indeed, the baby 
was ill too, and the grandmother was in despair 
about it all. Another woman was so depressed 
because of her two little boys, both paralyzed 
and covered with impetigo, which is a polite 
medical term for the results of unutterable 
hygienic conditions. Our ambulance boys 
thought the kiddies had smallpox until a nurse 
explained. They were only eight and ten years 
old and in such a frightful condition. The 
mother insisted that the paralysis was from the 
terror. I don't know; I should think almost 
any strange physical phenomenon might come 
out of what they have all been through. 

One woman had her husband and a strong 
young son of about twenty-two with her and 



16 The Children of France 

neither of the men could speak. "Since the 
bombardment," she said; I suppose this is the 
civilian shell shock. 

And so it goes. After you have met the two 
trains daily and watched the weary crowd pass 
by with their bundles and talked with many of 
them, you can think of nothing else. You be- 
gin to feel beaten and sore yourself; it is too 
much human tragedy to look upon in a few 
minutes. The relentlessness of it all, in those 
words of Maurya, in Synge's "Riders to the 
Sea," as she looked upon her last son drowned 
in the great storm, came to me so often here. 
You remember, she says: "There isn't anything 
more the sea can do to me now." And as you 
meet these homeless people you feel that there 
is nothing more that war can do to them. It 
has taken all. 

This morning at the Casino I asked our 
photographer if he thought he could get a pic- 
ture of them as they sat at the tables. We 
were standing on the balcony looking down on 
them. Hernmet thought a moment as his keen 
photographer's eye took in the scene: "It can't 
be done. They are all black, black and white ; 



And the Red Cross 17 

black clothes, white faces — ^you couldn't get 
them." 

I cannot forget that remark, it is so true, 
black clothes, white faces, hundreds of them — 
you can't get them. 

Sometime I want to tell you what these 
wonderful French people are doing here with 
those poor country folk of theirs. If the Lord 
does help those who help themselves, the 
French are going to have a tremendous amount 
of assistance. 



18 The Children of France 



Evian, France, 
September 30, 1917 

Can you imagine what a Government de- 
lousing station would be like? No, you can't. 
Neither could any one else before this hideous 
war began. It used to be an occasional prob- 
lem in an emergency situation. Now it has 
become a business, this keeping vermin off hu- 
man beings. I suppose it will soon become a 
profession. I met a woman up back of the 
lines who had a dug-out not far off and she 
earned her living cleaning vermin from sol- 
diers and their clothes. I used to be sensitive 
about mentioning fleas in San Francisco. 
Now, . . . but all values are relative, n'est-ce- 
pas? 

Well, I want to tell you about the Annex 
Gordon here at Evian which has been estab- 



And the Red Ci'oss 19 

lished for the particular purpose of getting the 
lice and vermin off of these poor rapatries and 
curing the skin lesions which result from such 
conditions. 

I think the best way to describe Annex Gor- 
don is to tell you the story of a woman and her 
eleven children I saw in one of the wards 
there. When this poor rapatrie and her little 
brood were examined at the Casino dispensary, 
it was discovered that all twelve heads were in- 
habited and diseased and that three of them 
suffered with itch. They were sent to the An- 
nex Gordon. The first room to receive them 
is divided into little compartments; each com- 
partment is numbered. The family were put 
into twelve compartments, a bag with the same 
number as the compartment hangs in each and 
into these bags went their clothes, and the 
mother and the children put on the toweling 
bathrobes and slippers provided in each com- 
partment. The bags of clothing were taken 
immediately to the fumigating room. The 
little family went downstairs to the baths and 
douches. Here each one received, in separate 
rooms, the treatment prescribed ; the three who 
had the itch went into sulphur baths. All the 



20 Tlie Children of Frame 

heads were cleaned and disinfected and in forty 
minutes our group was clean and had gone to 
another series of compartments on another floor 
to put on clean clothes. If their clothes are 
very bad, they are given a new outfit. This 
often happens. They remain here from two to 
ten days, depending upon the seriousness of 
their trouble. During the past four weeks, six 
hundred and twenty have stayed from two to 
ten days or longer; three hundred and fifty 
have passed through with baths, and three hun- 
dred and sixty with head douches. 

The dormitories are clean and attractive. 
Different towns and cities such as Nancy, 
Paris, Toulouse, St. Etienne, Cannes, Rouen, 
have furnished these "salles" and great pride is 
taken in them. It is a perfectly run establish- 
ment; the kitchens are spotless and the food 
appetizing. 

I know that by this time you are thinking 
that this process must be a dreadful one and 
that only the lowest classes among the rapatries 
are ever sent to Annex Gordon. Well, that is 
ahiiost the greatest tragedy here in Evian ; the 
fact that these rapatries number many, many 
refined, decent people who have never been in 



And the Red Cross 21 

any but comfortable and pleasant surround- 
ings. I saw in Annex Gordon, three middle- 
aged people, a sister and two brothers. The 
men were educated gentlemen, professors both 
of them, and yet they were coming in with 
one hundred and forty-five others to be cleaned 
up. I saw one lovely little child there — a little 
girl of ten with such beautiful auburn hair; 
great tears rolled down her face and her moth- 
er's face also, as the nurse gently cut away 
the great masses of soft hair to get at the poor 
little head. 

No, I have failed utterly in giving you any 
idea of rapatries if you have a sort of a "scum- 
of-the-earth" picture in your mind. These 
poor people are sick, dirty and weary after 
three years of suffering and lack of all home 
comforts, but they are many of them just the 
type of people you would find in small New 
England towns. 

Another big work the Government has un- 
dertaken is the care of about sixteen hundred 
old people at the College, a fine old building 
on the Lake, which has been well adapted to 
the uses of the old people. Here the old home- 
less folks, who have not been claimed, are taken 



22 The Children of France 

and cared for, gently and sympathetically. 
Many of them cannot read or write and the 
women of the Evian local Committee spend 
hours talking with them, helping them to re- 
member friends they may have in the interior 
of France, and writing their letters for them. 
In this way some three hundred of the sixteen 
hundred have been put into touch with friends. 

I wish I could make you feel the tenderness 
and kindness with which these French volun- 
teer workers help these people. I saw such a 
touching little scene at the College. An old 
woman, ninety-two they said, was standing in 
the vestiare room having a new white cap 
tried on. She looked up at the kindly workers 
with such a sweet old smile, as the friendly 
hands tied on her cap for her. Then the old 
woman tried to put on over the cap the old 
handkerchief which she had worn before. The 
worker remonstrated smilingly, but tied it on 
and the old woman went off happy. And it 
isn't one old woman that is treated thus, but 
hundreds, and you love and admire these splen- 
did French women who give their service so 
devotedly. 

The workers at the Annex Gordon too, are 



And the Red Cross 23 

splendid in their work. I saw such kindness 
there, so much real understanding of what it 
meant to be in such a pitiable condition. 

Every night as I listen to the welcome given 
these people at the Casino, I am more and more 
deeply impressed with the way in which the 
French oiFer their help to these homeless coun- 
trymen. It is done with a delicacy of touch, 
a simple directness, a warmth, all as lovely as 
the shady roads through their beautiful vil- 
lages. You always hear that the French have 
such a sense of approach to their buildings. 
Well, that sense of theirs is not limited to the 
buildings ! 

The way in which they have asked the Amer- 
ican Red Cross to help in Evian has been per- 
fectly choking in its warm gratitude and desire 
to have us do just what we think best. Our 
men spend a great deal of time assuring these 
tired people here that the Americans want to 
help them in the way the French want to be 
helped. What we are doing seems such a drop 
in their great bucket of war and its sufferings. 
And these people look at us with glistening 
eyes and thank us so constantly. 



24 The Children of France 

A rapatrie asked me tonight if I were 
French. I said: "No, American." "Ah! 
c'est la meme chose — la men^e chose, Madame 1" 
Think of that! 



And the Red Cross 25 



Li/on, France, 
September 9, 1917 

I WANT to tell you about this morning while 
my heart is still thumping about it. We were 
in Lyon looking over the ground for a con- 
valescent home for the little rapatries from 
Evian, and the French Committee which had 
us in charge brought us an invitation last night 
from the French Colonel, to be on the platform 
early this morning to meet the train bringing 
the first big group — four hundred and thirteen 
— of English exchange prisoners from German 
prisons. Well, we were there ! The platforms 
were packed with people, the officials of the 
City of Lyon, the Mayor, the Counselors, the 
Reception Committee in brilliant uniforms, the 
French Colonel and his staff, and the British 
officer, Major Wilkinson, who had come over 



26 The Children of France 

from Berne to meet the train. The French 
Red Cross infirmieres with their baskets of 
tri-color flowers made a fascinating picture in 
their white and blue uniforms. 

It was all very tense as we waited. The 
French officials saw that every provision for 
the comfortable handling of the men was made, 
after much talk and many changes. You felt 
they were marking time; there must be some 
outlet. Major Wilkinson laughed and talked 
with us but his eyes moved constantly in the di- 
rection from which the train was to come. He 
seemed to get taller and taller as we waited. 
He is a magnificent looking man, towering 
above every one. His keen British face looked 
as unshakable as Gibraltar. Nothing cheers 
one so much about this whole war as that par- 
ticular type of British officer. I found myself 
being ridiculously glad that ^lajor Wilkinson 
looked just as he did, that the men would see 
him first as the train came in. 

A blast from the engine whistle out in the 
train-yard brought a tightening of the crowd 
and the band began to play. A^Tiy must there 
be bands at such a moment? I don't know. 
Perhaps, you couldn't get through such mo- 



And the Red Cross 27 

merits without one, but as the train rolled slow- 
ly past us, "God save the King" became "Tip- 
perary," the crowd on the platforms cheered 
and waved, the nurses threw the flowers into 
the crowded windows ; we sang, we cheered, we 
wept, we shook the eager outstretched hands 
of those poor, gaunt men, and all the while the 
band played "Tipperary." The train stopped 
and those starved men climbed down from the 
cars, formed in little pathetic squads with an 
officer at the head, and went by us — the lame, 
halt, blind (three of them) — with a gallantry 
indescribable, and saluted the officers waiting 
to receive them. I shall never forget Major 
Wilkinson. A British officer moved is one of 
the most inspiring sights; his jaw tightened, 
his eyes glistened, but he stood quietly at atten- 
tion, never missing one of the sad evidences 
those men bore, of their weary broken bodies, 
for those were broken men, men who would 
never be what they had been before. We knew 
that, because that was why they were being 
exchanged, men who could no longer be used 
against the captors. And some of those plucky 
Tommies had their pet dogs on leashes, and 
how we cheered those pets! They broke the 



28 The Children of France 

tension a bit. One car of the train was filled 
with the men too sick to walk and they were 
carried out last to the ambulances. 

The great concourse of people moved down 
the station steps to the big room below and 
there the men and officers were welcomed by 
the officials ; the French, warm, glowing, eager 
to express their hearty greetings of those poor 
fellows; the English JMajor, brief, with a grim- 
ness and determination in his voice that was 
about as moving as "Tipperary." And the 
men, — they were too happy; it broke your 
heart — free at last and on the way to Blighty! 

In front of the station were the lines of auto- 
mobiles to carry them off to the barracks. A 
company of French cavalry on black horses, 
with their shining helmets, and swords flashing 
in the sunlight, acted as escort, and the band 
played "Tipperary" over and over. The cheers 
grew stronger and stronger, the music got into 
your feet. You were marching to victory; 
9/ou, just a plain woman in petticoats, touched 
for a high, glorious moment the vision that puts 
humans through blood and fire for the sake of 
an ideal. 

We followed them to the barracks to have 



And the Red Cross 29 

luncheon with the thirty-five officers. I sat 
next to a young Captain of the Royal Lincoln- 
shires, an Oxford man. He looked so thin and 
drawn, his eyes, deep set and full of nerves. 
He told me that was his trouble, nerves. He 
came to France in August, 1914, was captured 
in a hospital after the Mons fight. His trou- 
ble had been dysentery. In a weakened condi- 
tion he was marched to Germany. There he 
was crowded into a freight car with thirty-five 
other men, so tightly wedged in they could 
neither sit down nor lie down. There they 
stood for ninety-eight hours with one cup of 
coffee given during that time. Many of the 
men never survived those ninety-eight hours. 
Captain P. lived, as he said, in Hell, for 
the first nine months. Seldom was food 
offered him that was not spit on. It was 
eat or starve. After the first year things 
grew better. I hated to have him talk 
about it, he looked so tired and so worn, but 
I was held by the story; to hear at first hand 
such experiences, after three years of rumors 
and denials, of exaggerations or belittling of 
hardships. 

Captain P. spoke feelingly of one thing — "I 



30 The Children of Fnmce 

am so tired of being yelled at ; everything that 
has been said to me for three years has been 
yelled at me from a distance of about three 
inches from my face; I am jumpy about it." 
Then too, he talked interestingly about his 
short share in the war. He was holding a house 
with thirty others near M. It was getting too 
hot for them, as two machine guns were busy. 
They decided to make a dash for the shelter of 
the village street ; one by one they climbed the 
six-foot bank and made a dash across an oj)en 
road and up a side street. "We didn't expect 
to make it, any of us, and we jolly well pelted, 
I can tell you." 

It is difficult to give it to you — that room 
full of officers, each with his own terrible ex- 
perience of war shut up within himself. One 
young Lieutenant of the West Kent regiment, 
that famous regiment that has never lost a 
trench, looked so startlingly frail, and yet there 
was a glow about him of returning vigor, per- 
haps. He had come out of his prison in a dy- 
ing condition, but an operation in Switzerland 
had saved him. 

Colonel Neish of the Gordon Highlanders 
was the senior ranking officer among the pris- 



And the Red Cross 31 

oners and his response to the speech of welcome 
was so Scotch. There was really nothing that 
could be said so he did not say it. You just felt 
the tenseness all through the room: "We are 
glad to be here, but you will not blame us for 
longing to get home." 

My officer said: "I can't believe anything 
really until I am actually in England; I have 
been lied to so many times !" I asked him what 
he wanted to do most when he reached home. 
His answer came quickly: "I want to go down 
to the sea, where I used to go as a little lad. I 
have been dreaming about it for months ! How 
lazy I am going to be ! No yelling, just the old 
comfortable boom of the sea!" 

As I read this over I have been wondering 
whether it would stir in you certain feelings 
that came to me, at the station and at the lunch- 
eon. I seemed to see American men — our men 
— young lads I have watched playing tennis in 
the sunshine, older men pouring out of a base- 
ball game, coming home broken men. I could 
not get the thought out of my mind. We must 
make it short, my dear, by holding nothing 
back at the beginning, our men and our Red 



32 The Children of France 

Cross, our two strong hands here in this war- 
stricken France! 

"It's a long, long way to Tipperary" — 
Well, it's longer still to the homeland. We 
must make it short. There must be few such 
men as I saw this morning! 



And the Red Cross 33 



Eviatij France^ 
October U, 1917 

I THOUGHT I had told you everything. I 
haven't — in some ways I have not begun. To- 
day at eleven was almost the most dramatic, 
the most thrilling moment of all at Evian. Six 
hundred and eighty Belgian children arrived 
on the morning train. It was indescribable ; all 
these little children, thin, sickly looking, alone ; 
all of them between the ages of four and twelve. 
It is impossible to picture it for you. Those 
poor children calling "Vive la France," then, 
"Vive la Belgique" for the first time in three 
years. Those of us who stood on the platform 
could only wave to them, — cheering was impos- 
sible. 

The boys were livelier than the girls — the 
little girls of ten and twelve, in charge of four 



34 The Children of France 

or five brothers and sisters, cried bitterly. 
Two-thirds of these children have been taken 
from their parents because their fathers would 
not work for the Germans and the mothers 
were willing to let the children go rather than 
see them starve. I have never seen anything 
more poignant than those little groups of chil- 
dren clinging to the oldest sister and brother 
as they marched down the little street to the 
Casino. It was the saddest, the crudest sight 
— not one grown-up, just children, little chil- 
dren, marching bravely along, singing, and cry- 
ing. 

As they passed along, the rapatries on the 
sidewalk called to them: "Don't cry, you are 
going to have meat!" And the boys shouted: 
"Meat, we are going to have meat!" as they 
marched. You couldn't believe it. You were 
looking at starving children, Belgian children. 
Many things flashed into my mind. "Seven 
cents a day feeds a Belgian baby." Do you 
remember our Belgian Commission cards at 
home? Everything we did or tried to do last 
year for the "C.R.B." came back to me. Here 
were some of the children we didn't feed, per- 
haps — the long, long line. It seemed to stretch 




"learning to forget" at chateau des halles 




A GROUP OF CHILDREN AT THE AMERICAN RED CR03S HOSPITAL AT 
EVIAN, AS YET UNKNOWN AND UNCLAIMED 



And the Red Cross 35 

out for miles before you. You seemed to see 
that little wavering line of starving children 
passing on and on over miles of devastated 
country. There are no words for it, my dear. 
Only Raemaker could picture it. 

As I say, I thought of everything I had 
heard about Belgium and her sufferings and 
I realized that nothing I had ever heard had 
given me any conception of starving Belgian 
children. Some of our C.R.B. men were there; 
they are Red Cross men now, working like 
beavers, and yet they felt that sight to-day as 
few could. They knew what these little ones 
had come from. You felt glad that Mr. 
Hoover was not there to see that special bit 
of tragedy he worked so hard to prevent. I 
understand now that look in his face when he 
talked about Belgium last year, a deepening 
of those splendid lines about his mouth, that 
made you feel that he would never give up the 
fight to save the Belgian children. 

The Casino was glowing with good cheer; 
the meat was there, plenty of it, with potatoes 
and hot chocolate and hot roasted chestnuts. 
How they ate! Yes, they just stuffed that 
good dinner! They were hungry and they 



36 The CJiildren of France 

were children. I shall never forget their hands, 
little bird-like claws, so thin, and when they 
sang they waved those pathetic little hands. 
I shall never forget. And such singing! The 
spontaneity of it! As we stood watching the 
eager faces, suddenly they would sing, with 
all their might; those shrill little voices shouted 
out a song against the Germans. Those songs 
must have been learned in secret, and yet every 
tiny child knew every word. When Mile. 
G. sang their beloved Braban^onne for 
them, they were absorbedly silent until the 
chorus and then such a volume of song as came 
from those Belgian children! "Le Roi, la loi, 
la Liberte!" No one could bear it; the French, 
the Americans, the Belgian officials who had 
come to receive them, all stood with tears on 
their faces. You seemed to be touching with 
bare hands the agony of those thousands of Bel- 
gian women who have watched their little ones 
suffer for three years. And they were so lit- 
tle, few over twelve years old, and such a small 
twelve. An underfed child; it is no longer a 
phrase to us, it's a reality. Famine children of 
India, I remember as a child, seemed too dis- 
tant to be real. Those Belgian children who 



And the Red Cross 37 

for three years have not had enough to eat, have 
a look about them that makes you ache, it's 
so wrong ; and then you stiffen. You feel that 
you will fight for a hundred years if necessary, 
to prove such methods wrong ! 

Well, I must go on with my story. After 
the eating and the singing, these children were 
questioned and registered, and I imagine those 
records are perhaps the most interesting little 
documents we have had from Belgium for a 
long time. Children have a way of telling 
things clearly, as they saw them, with a direct- 
ness that never confuses the issue in your mind 
or theirs. They were so glad to tell their story 
and they crowded into the great Bureau Room, 
regardless of barriers and proper alphabetic 
order. They were children who understood 
that they v/ere with friends. 

Then came the medical inspection and I was 
glad that an American Red Cross doctor was 
there to help. I talked ^\ith him afterwards; 
he was not ashamed of his tears. He told me 
the little claw-like hands were only an indica- 
tion of the whole under-nourished condition of 
those children. But he said: "We have them 
in time, a few weeks of proper feeding and no 



38 The Children of France 

epidemic and they will pull up." The con- 
tagious cases, like mumps, skin infections, etc., 
were isolated and the children were arranged 
for the night. Each little child left the Casino 
with two flags, Belgian and French, clasped 
tightly in one hand and a bright new franc in 
the other. They were full of food and we were 
full of hope. Those two sensations seem bound 
up together these days. They go off to-mor- 
row to places near Paris which have been pro- 
vided for them. The kind Belgian doctor goes 
along with them. He was just mohhed by the 
children at the station when he came. They 
wanted to be kissed, and that man kissed on 
both pale little cheeks every child he could 
reach ! 

My dear, I want to be in Brussels when the 
King comes home I 



And the Red Cross 39 



Evian, France, 
December 12, 1917 

We came down here from Paris last night. 
Cold! Well, I have never sat in a refrigerator 
so I don't really know whether my comparison 
is true — ^but if I ever had sat in a refrigerator 
I am sure I should have felt as we did this 
morning in that cold compartment. Outside, 
gray mist and snow over the hills and fields; 
inside, human steam and cold that went 
through all your layers of clothing and came 
out the "other side" unwarmed. 

Miss P. of the English Friends w^as in our 
compartment; she looked like a little squirrel 
in her uniform of gray. She has a wonderful 
face, great dark eyes, full of everything, light, 
gladness, sympathy, fire, — oh, just all you 
demand of eyes. She was on her way to the 



40 The Children of France 

Friends' Hospital for tubercular people at 
Sermaize. She told us about it in her quick, 
energetic way. She needs more nurses and we 
hope to lend her several from the hospital 
here. 

That is one of the wonderful things over 
here, there is so much opportunity for team 
work ; and the Red Cross seems to me to stand 
for just that, not swallowing up or absorbing 
work already existing and doing well, but just 
helping every organization to do more and bet- 
ter work. 

Well, I began to tell you about the cold, and 
then Miss P. popped into the letter because she 
made us forget the cold, and that's rather 
typical of experiences over here ; you start with 
a discomfort and you end with some bit of ser- 
vice that makes you forget everything but the 
results. 

That has surely been the story at Evian. It 
was not an easy task to convert a rather un- 
wieldy summer hotel into a hospital quickly, 
when to get supplies and transportation for 
equipment is one of the most difficult of tasks ; 
and yet to-day we found a smoothly running 
hospital with seventy-five cases of contagious 



And the Red C?'oss 41 

diseases being cared for after just a month of 
work. The nurses looked tired but happy; 
they have worked so devotedly. The whole 
staff has done all sorts and kinds of work to 
hurry the hospital along to this point because 
the need was so great. One thing helped out, 
the convoys of rapatries stopped for two weeks ; 
that gave us just time enough to get ready. 

You can be proud of your American Chil- 
dren's Hospital. The Hotel Chatelet makes a 
most modern and comfortable hospital and as 
I stood on the steps and watched our ambu- 
lance men carrying the little patients into the 
big entrance hall, wrapped in blankets on the 
stretchers, and saw the efficient service given 
by nurses and aides, I was sort of choked by 
it all — just a glad choke. I am so glad this 
comfortable haven is here for those sick, home- 
less children. Our nurses adore so just clean- 
ing them up and making them comfortable, 
and these ambulance men give a service that 
can never be described. Many a child comes 
without tears because he has seen the twinkle 
in the eyes of the man who treats him like a 
little brother. 

On the first floor of the hospital are the of- 



42 The Children of France 

fices and nurses' room, the dining-room for the 
staff, and then a big room for the mothers — 
the visiting-room. It is warm and beautiful 
with a fine view of the Lake and Lausanne in 
the distance. Here every day the mothers 
come for an hour and are taken upstairs, a 
few at a time, to see their children. Now I 
know you are wondering how we can do that in 
a contagious hospital. Well, it isn't easy and 
it isn't scientific and it has a certain small risk, 
but it's human. These poor families cling to 
each other in a way difficult to describe. The 
women, especially the older ones, are emotion- 
ally unstrung and hysterical. They have paid 
such a hea\y price for freedom and these chil- 
dren are all they have left, and they cling to 
them with an intensity that breaks your heart. 
To quarantine these children rigidly is just out 
of the question. It would be the easiest way 
to get the best results medically, but our whole 
staff is cooperating in making the visiting as 
safe as possible. The mother puts on a sterile 
robe and washes her hands and face thoroughly 
before leaving the ward, and the hospital pro- 
vides little toys for the women to take to the 
children so as to prevent if possible the giving 



And the Red Cross 4>3 

of food to those who are sick. One thing we 
do insist upon, and that is that the children can- 
not be taken away until our Medecin-chef and 
the French ]Medecin-chef approve. But these 
poor people in one short month have learned 
that the American Hospital is their friend, and 
although new ones come each day, good news 
travels fast. The grounds around the hospital 
are large and there are five villas, one for the 
nurses, one for staff, two for service, and one 
Dr. has decided to fill with some well chil- 
dren and mothers who are waiting for little 
brother, sister or mother to get well at Evian. 
We are here as friends, you know, and we must 
be friends. 

As I came away from the hospital this after- 
noon I walked down the grounds to the lower 
gate. It was just sunset and the winter trees 
against the haze of pink brought the homeland 
back to me with new and precious vividness. 
At such moments I feel as if some day I must 
smooth with my hand every loved spot at home. 
It is wonderful to feel that your beloved coun- 
try is worth suffering for. 

I stood for a moment looking back at the 
hospital, when suddenly one of our aides ran 



44 The Children of France 

down the path ahead of me and opened the big 
gate and I saw from the now empty villa a 
little procession coming. The small brown 
coffin was carried by our men, the aide and one 
of our staff men following; that was all, under 
the winter trees. The little aide is an Irish 
girl with blue black hair and deep blue eyes; 
as she passed me the tears were rolling down 
her cheeks. 

Oh, I know there have been thousands of 
children sacrificed and there will be thousands 
more. This was a boy of twelve, dead from 
tuberculosis through lack of food and care, 
motherless and fatherless by German shells. 

I find I can't bear these things unless I twist 
some comfort out of them somehow, and as I 
came back through the dusk I felt that the little 
brown coffin had a big significance — American 
evidence of that hideous doctrine "German 
military necessity." And then came the feel- 
ing that there are still things German military 
forces cannot touch. The soul of the little lad 
had gone winging on its way somewhere be- 
yond the haze of the winter sunset. I kept 
thinking of Maeterlinck's "Blue Bird" in the 
scene called "INIemory" where Thoughts of 



And the Red Cross ^^ 

those on Earth make happy the ones in the 
Land of Memory. Do you remember how 
beautifully that was done, — the little Nor- 
mandy cottage, the sweet old couple and the 
little children, just the kind of a spot this little 
boy may have come from ? Somehow I like to 
think he has gone to just such a scene, and when 
they crowd to welcome him and hear of Earth, 
he'll say: "Yes, the Americans have come. 
They cared for me. I died in an American 
Hospital." Can't you just hear the cheer those 
spirits of the men of Mons, the Marne, and of 
Ypres, would give? 

No, the little brown coffin under the winter 
trees is not all! 

Robert, who has just come to lay my fire, is 
a little rapatrie of twelve too, but he is well 
and strong with chubby face and such nice 
"little boy" eyes. He lays the fire most care- 
fully and sits close watching the flame catch 
each piece of wood as he lays it on. I imagine 
it is the only time of day that he gets warm. 
He told me he came from a little village "that 
is all gone now but was such a nice village 
once." 

Don't scold me, but I just gave him a franc; 



46 Tlie Children of France 

he almost fell into the fire from astonishment, 
but I could not give Robert just ten centimes 
to-night. I know the professional philan- 
thropist would scorn me but I really can't in- 
vestigate him; he hasn't any sources of infor- 
mation, they are all gone — blown up ; he hasn't 
any past, present or future; he is just Robert, 
a rapatrie, and I am far from home too, — so 
there! Gracious, he is still bringing up wood! 
I'll be warm to-night, and his face shines with 
smiles. 

There are people in the world, I know, who 
would say that the other little lad would prob- 
ably have died anyway, and that Robert is no 
worse off than thousands of others. All right, 
I can't argue with them and I won't, as long 
as they give money to the Red Cross. 

It is a clear cold night, and up on the hills 
seventy-five sick children are comfortable and 
safe. 

I think I'll give Robert another franc in 
the morning! 



And the Red Cross 47 



Evian, France, 
December 13, 1917 

This has been a long day. The morning 
convoy comes in at a quarter before six; it is 
quite dark and very cold but I find that noth- 
ing quenches the spirits of these homeless peo- 
ple. They go marching down this little street, 
old and young, keeping step with the buglers 
who lead the procession now. This morning 
it was too dark to distinguish faces as they 
passed, but one could tell by the noise of their 
wooden shoes that many little children were 
marching along, the short quick step together 
with the longer step of the older ones, and some 
of them were singing as they went. 

But this letter is to be a "bath story." Yes, 
Evian-les-Bains now lives up to her former 
reputation. Every one here has felt that if 



48 The Children of France 

only the rapatries could have baths and clean 
clothes immediately upon arrival, that much 
disease and a great deal of discomfort could 
be remedied. The job was not ours but be- 
longed to the French, and it seemed doubtful 
if it could be done. However, the Government 
appointed a very wonderful man as Medecin- 
chef for Rapatries, Dr. Paul Armand-Delille 
— and he was determined to offer baths to these 
rapatries. His helpers discouraged him, said 
it was not possible, that he would have a revo- 
lution if he tried to force baths upon these re- 
turning people. Well, you know the world 
has learned anew a certain French quality, the 
quality that makes French soldiers get ahead 
of their protecting fire in their determination 
to reach their goal. The French Medecin-chef 
wanted baths; he believed in baths; and there 
are baths. 

Yes, I have been for two hours watching his 
interesting demonstration. He has had the 
regular army shower barracks erected close to 
the big Casino and reached by a covered pas- 
sageway. The central barrack is a general 
check room where the people leave their val- 
uables; then the men have a barrack, the boys 




^TrrLJn^ ""^ "•'' '-°''" "'' '■''''' ^''^ ■^^'^ "-^S A MUTILATED 
PPpL.x . """^ "''''"■' "'^ -^ '■°-'°'^'^ PE'^C"^ "VEN HIM BY A 

GERMAN SOLDIER. ANOTHER CASE IS MENTIONED ON PAGE 66 



And the Red Cross 49 

have theirs, and the women and girls and tiny 
children share another. 

We went first to see the boys. The big room 
was warm and steamy; at the far end are the 
big steam sterilizers for their clothes, and the 
whole water control. In the center are the 
showers, twenty-four sprays, and in front of 
the showers are the boys, sitting in rows wait- 
ing for their turns. Half of them are un- 
dressed at a time, their clothes placed in rope 
bags and put into the sterilizer. The other half 
sit watching and waiting the signal for them 
to undress. I wish I could make you see it 
all — their eager happy faces, their squeals of 
delight when they drop their bath robes and 
prance out under the shower for their scrub. 
Two young priests in rubber suits superintend 
the scrubbing, and how they work! The big 
boys go at themselves with vigor, beginning 
with their heads and thoroughly cleaning them- 
selves. The little boys have to be helped be- 
cause they get so excited they drop their soap, 
and there is many a scramble to get the slippery 
piece back. The room gets full of steam and 
you see the young white bodies flashing about 
through the gray mist. One small boy man- 



50 The Children of France 

aged to stand on his head under his spray, just 
as a final expression of joy, before he stepped 
off to give place to another. 

It is wonderful ! They are all laughing and 
shouting ; you cannot believe they are the same 
depressed looking children you helped off the 
train an hour before. I spoke to the Medecin- 
chef of that. He said : "Ah, you see, INIadame, 
another reason why I wanted the baths; these 
poor people are too sad, they must laugh or 
they cannot live." 

He took me to the other barracks. It was 
just the same, young and old men were laugh- 
ing like the boys. To be free and to be clean, 
it's a wonderful combination! 

The only protests were heard in the women's 
barrack where some of the tiny children were 
frightened by the noise of the sprays and the 
steam. The women's barrack has the showers 
arranged with linen curtains in between so 
that each person is standing in a small com- 
partment. 

It is a splendid bit of French efficiency. 
No one is forced to bathe, but it is all pre- 
sented in such a way that no one wants to 
miss it. There are posters up in the trains that 



And the Red Cross 51 

bring them, telling of the wonderful hot 
douches to be had at Evian-les-Bains. Hand- 
bills are scattered around explaining just how 
it is all done. It is part of France's welcome to 
her people ; it is all free, and it is done for their 
comfort. Barbers are there for the men and 
boys and coiffeurs for the women. 

Even babies are provided with separate little 
tubs, and in the middle of all that din and steam 
in the women's and girls' barrack I saw a small 
tot in his tub quite absorbed in chasing the soap 
around as it floated, just as I have watched 
your small David do at home. This mite's 
mother was taking her bath inside the curtain 
and she kept putting her head out and talking 
to him, and the baby would laugh and splash. 
He finally ended by throwing the soap at me 
just to make friends. 

I had wondered about those baths when I 
heard they had been installed. It seemed to 
me a tremendous undertaking to bathe fifteen 
hundred transient people daily and do it thor- 
oughly and well. And yet there it is running 
smoothly, and already the people in the In- 
terior are speaking of the improvement in the 
condition of the rapatries when they arrive. 



52 The Children of France 

I must say I like the laughter quite as much 
as the cleanliness for them all. You can hear 
the gay sounds quite a distance away. The 
whole place seems happier. I can't explain it ; 
I am not at all like the American who came 
down here to see this great moving tragedy and 
attributed all the emotions he saw at the Casino 
to the ba7id, said that all tears were caused by 
the vibration of the solar plexus and therefore 
those who sat nearest the music cried the 
loudest I But I liked Dr. Armand-Delille's ex- 
pression, "they are too sad, they must laugh or 
they cannot live." That bath does not change 
the great hideous facts for them, but they 
laugh heartily for the first time in many weary 
months, and if you have done that once, I only 
claim it is easier to do it the second time. 

It is snowing to-night and the twinkling 
lights everywhere look so cheerful — like a 
Christmas post-card. 



And the Red Cross 53 



Evian, France, 
December 14, 1917 

I HATE been up at the hospital all day and 
have spent most of my time in our dental clinic. 
Indeed, you see, we offer every attraction. 
Dr. W. has his office in one of the villas where 
we have a daily dispensary for cases not in need 
of hospital care. The office itself is mighty in- 
teresting, an illustration of Yankee ingenuity. 
Dr. W.'s chair did not appear with the rest of 
the equipment; no one knows where it is. It 
may appear, it may not. In the meantime Dr. 
W. has made a perfectly comfortable dentist's 
chair out of a wine barrel; one side is scooped 
out so you sit comfortably, and then all kinds 
of pieces are nailed on back and sides so tliat 
when it is covered with its clean cover it looks 
just like the real torture chair we all know. 



54 Tlie Children of France 

It is not easy for the doctor, because he can't 
adjust it, but Dr. W. is the kind of man who 
adjusts himself. 

I wish you could see him with the children. 
He simply has them hypnotized. I expected to 
hear nothing but howls; instead, just occa- 
sional groans such as grown-ups give forth un- 
der like circumstances. Dr. W. lays it all to 
the chair; he says the "good spirits" emanate 
from that. Well, it is marvelous, whatever the 
cause, and he hurts them too. But the children 
are very proud to be taken care of by an Amer- 
ican doctor. I saw one small boy's arms and 
legs stiffen with the pain, but he never clutched 
the doctor's arms once, as I should have done; 
he just bore it. The stimulus of an audience 
is eifective too, I think. The chair faces the 
window on the road, and small heads reach to 
the window-sill and many pairs of eyes gaze in 
admiringly. 

There were many pathetic cases to-day. One 
boy of eight with his entire head still bandaged 
from wounds from shell fire sat so patiently in 
the chair, his blue eyes fastened upon Dr. W.'s 
face with a look the doctor will never forget, 
I am sure. Another case was a little girl of 



And the Red Cross 55 

twelve with one leg gone 'way above the knee ; 
she was hurt in the bombardment of her vil- 
lage. She had soft dark eyes and such pretty 
hair, but her teeth were in such bad condition 
she said they ached all the time. But really, 
my dear, I often wonder whether there are any 
here who do not ache all over all the time ! 

The real moment in the dental chair is when 
you have a tooth pulled out. That is now a 
glorious experience. Dr. W. calls the bad 
tooth that must come out "a Boche," and I tell 
you they come out quickly. "Out with the 
Boche!" says Dr. W., his eyes twinkling, and 
everybody stiffens, small hands grip the sides, 
and the "trench is taken!" Really, you know, 
the dentist who can make himself popular with 
half-sick, frightened children is inspired. And 
the older people come too, and are so grateful. 
None of these things have been available for 
the civil population for over three years, and 
these people have suffered so many little in- 
conveniences as well as the big tragedies. You 
can easily imagine that a grinding toothache is 
more difficult to bear than a bombardment. 
One little boy said most emphatically when 



56 The Children of France 

asked which tooth ached: "They all ache, — pull 
them all out." 

It is amazing to see how reasonable these 
youngsters are after all they have been 
through; and yet there is a side to their obe- 
dience that hvu'ts. They act as though they 
had lived under strict orders and did not dare 
to breathe if told not to. 

As I stood on the steps of the villa before 
coming back to the hotel to-night, a big fluffy 
collie dog came bounding up to me in a most 
friendly fashion. I was astonished to see such 
a beautiful, well-groomed dog with the ra- 
patrie tag on, but a fine-looking elderly man 
came up with her and called her off, as she was 
almost embracing me. 

The man had come to take the little crippled 
girl back to their lodgings. We talked awhile 
as he waited. 

"Julie," he said, "is so eager to find my wife. 
She died last spring, and Julie has never un- 
derstood. There are only Julie and Marie 
left." 

He nodded toward the clinic. He was not 
asking for sympathy, just stating facts. I find 
such moments hardest to bear. You want to 



And the Red Cross 57 

put your arms around these people, — well — I 
gave the dog a big hug. She was such a 
beauty! And when Marie came out on her 
crutches, you never dreamed of such gentleness 
as that dog expressed. She just hovered 
around the child and yet never got in her way. 
And I heard a thoughtless person criticize these 
poor people for bringing such pets with them! 
Well, I can't imagine leaving a dog I loved 
behind. 

Our hospital has one small black-and-white 
dog living there. It belongs to a very sick 
little lad up in the scarlet-fever ward, and all 
day long that little dog sits on the steps watch- 
ing the door. Many children are carried in and 
he shows little interest, but let a child come out, 
and every hair quivers. 

It is the little things, the poignant little 
things that stiffen resolves over here. When 
you stand in a ward just back of the line, filled 
with those terribly wounded men, you are all 
dumb. It is too awful to grasp or sense; you 
come out dazed; your feelings are all big and 
general. But when you come down here to 
these results, especially with the old people and 



58 The Children of France 

the children, you find the whole wretched busi- 
ness a personal matter. 

Last night I came down to the Casino with 
an old, old woman, eighty-two years old, she 
said she was. She looked it. I begged her to 
ride but she insisted upon walking. She con- 
sented to my carrying her bundle. It was so 
heavy — something round and hard tied up in 
a thick linen towel — that as my arm ached my 
curiosity grew. I tried to think out what the 
bundle could contain. Finally I asked her. 

"Ah, Madame! They are my best plates — 
from my wedding day I have had them." 

Little things ! I feel all battered and bruised 
to-night. How are we ever to forget these lit- 
tle aching things? You feel that the very 
buildings in this town will breathe sadness for 
years to come. And yet think of all the pluck, 
the bravery and the hope ! Yes, these are big- 
ger than the sadness, after all. Good-night. 
That collie dog made me homesick, and I can't 
forget those wedding plates, and it's almost 
Christmas ! 



.hid the Bed Cross 59 



Chateau des Halles, Ste. Foy VArgentihre, 

November 20, 1917 

I WANT to tell you about this heavenly spot 
before it is actually opened. I have been wait- 
ing for time in which to tell you about it ever 
since the Red Cross decided to take it and make 
a convalescent hospital out of it. It is a won- 
derful old estate with a fine modern chateau 
on it that belonged to JNIonsieur JNIangini, the 
French engineer who built the Riviera rail- 
road. At his widow's death, the Lyon Hos- 
pital were given this estate to be used as a 
convalescent hospital for children. Owmg to 
war conditions the Lyon Hospital Commit- 
tee could not avail themselves of the chateau, 
so they offered it to the Red Cross free, if the 
Red Cross would leave it fitted up as a hos- 
pital after the war. Our Children's Bureau 



60 The Children of France 

have been hard at work on the equipping of it 
for several weeks, and noAV we are ready for 
patients. It has been a big job and only 
through the untiring push and intelligence of 
Mrs. H., our business manager here, have we 
been able to open so soon. 

In one way the chateau is an ideal spot for 
such a hospital. It stands high on a hill with 
a fine old forest around it of cedars, pines and 
redwoods, with a splendid farm running on the 
estate to supply us with milk, butter, eggs and 
vegetables. The house itself, being modern in 
arrangements and conveniences — it was built 
in 1885 — adapted itself quite easily to a hos- 
pital of wards, isolation rooms, play rooms, 
laboratory, and even a beautiful Gothic chapel 
for service, as it is a long walk to any village 
church. The great job was to supplement its 
heating facilities, to install a bigger hot water 
system, and to extend the electricity and ar- 
range for the laundry work in hospital quan- 
tities. These things have all been done in the 
face of difficulties most people would have felt 
insurmountable, but nothing daunts Mrs. H., 
not even a stubborn Frenchman. She speaks 
French just as well as English, and she can 




CHATEAU DKS HALI.ES. AMERICAN RED CROSS CONVALESCENT HOSPITAL 
FOR CHILDREN NEAR LYON 



And the Red Cross 61 

sputter as long and as loud as her opponent 
and be perfectly good-natured and smiling 
when it is all over. A most healthy respect for 
her has been established in the chateau and the 
nearby villages she has dealt with, more than 
that, — a real friendly alFection. Even the 
servants, Jean, Marie and Clotilde, whom we 
inherit with the chateau, have been able to jump 
out of the grooves of forty years of service 
here and do things for her that they have never 
done before and never will do again in the 
world I fancy, for any one else but this Amer- 
ican woman who astonishes them. 

The chateau is a wonderful place to-night, 
everything is ready for the first cases ; we will 
begin with ten at a time and work up to one 
hundred and fifty as our Evian Hospital fills 
up and needs an outlet for convalescent ra- 
patries, and of course the rapatries children 
who reach Lyon and who need care are wel- 
come whether they have been in our hospital at 
Evian or not. The little beds are all ready; 
the walls of the rooms have been carefully cov- 
ered to protect them. Such beautiful called 
woodwork! The lower part has been covered, 
but nothing hides the paintings in the play- 



62 Tlie Children of France 

room, of deer and dogs and rollicking liunt- 
ers. The deep red carpet has been left on the 
white marble stair-case so that the great en- 
trance hall used by the staff visitors looks much 
as it might have looked before. The office, 
too, is a beautiful room with its Italian marble 
fireplace filling one end; and old carved cup- 
boards and chests, two fine spacious oak tables 
and high backed chairs give the feeling of per- 
sonality one can never entirely separate from 
such a place. All the furnishings that were 
practical for our use for ofiices, staff rooms and 
management were left in the chateau, so that 
much of the beauty remains. 1 wonder what 
the children will think. 

The fall coloring still lingers in the land- 
scape; it is crisp and cold and so lovely out of 
doors, and the big house is in apple-pie order 
for these homeless kiddies from that awful dis- 
trict, the invaded district. What little real im- 
pression that word made on me before I saw 
invaded districts, destroyed villages and ruined 
homes! I am so glad we have the beautiful 
place for the hospital, it seems to me it must 
be comforting to the children I have seen at 
Evian to come to such a place as this. The 



And the Red Cross 63 

love and devoted work that have gone into 
everything here that tliese Red Cross workers 
have done, must sink into them somehow. 

The village of Les Ilalles is very much ex- 
cited over having its loved chateau opened 
again ; the villagers are largely women and chil- 
dren now, though some old men, gardeners, 
road menders and the like, are always appear- 
ing around the bend of the roads, in blue 
smocks, with red kerchiefs tied round their 
necks — the most picturesque human beings in 
existence, and the dirtiest. The chateau gar- 
dener, Pierre, is the husband of our cook, 
JNIarie, and is assigned to military service at 
the front. He has been so valuable to us on 
his "permission," that Mrs. H. hopes to get him 
transferred to Red Cross service. He is fifty 
years old. It would be a great stroke, for 
Marie has infinite possibilities for unpleasant- 
ness and we feel Pieri'e is the only one who can 
keep her in order. As she is inherited with the 
chateau we feel anxious. Jean, the butler, 
stands solidly upon his thirty years of service, 
and I imagine nothing but a machine gun will 
ever move him from certain positions. 

One thing has been done which Jean finds 



64 The Children of France 

it hard to forgive. The fine old oak table, large 
enough to seat twenty people, has been brought 
upstairs from the servants' kitchen and rubbed 
and oiled for the staff dining-room, which has 
been made out of Jean's china closet. The 
double blow of changing the table and invading 
his sacred cupboards has had a most solemn 
effect upon him. He passed all the food to 
Mrs. H. last at dinner last night; that is his 
way, we have found, of expressing his disap- 
proval. But there are only six servants now 
and there is another big table for them. This 
one is so lovely we are to dispense with any 
linen for it — even doilies; that too hurts 
Jean. I think he considers us almost as dif- 
ficult to bear as the Germans. To have been 
willed to the Lyon Hospital to start with, 
and to land in the hands of Americans who 
move his beloved things about ! 

And yet I have a feeling he likes us in spite 
of it all, at least some of us; the Doctor and 
one of our ambulance men, a boy with dimples 
and a twinkle in his eyes, get anything from 
Jean they want, but he has not yet smiled 
upon any of us. 

Pierre is different; he is full of smiles; longs 



And the Fed Cross 65 

to get back to his beloved garden and grounds. 
I think he is glad of the new life we are bring- 
ing. When we came out here to see the place 
in early October there was the most exquisite 
display of gorgeous roses in the terrace gar- 
den, blooming alone in the golden sunshine. 
The chateau was closed, boarded up, with the 
servants living in the kitchen region. From 
that terrace you look down the valley toward 
Lyon, one of the most beautiful views of 
French country I have seen anywhere. I think 
Pierre feels he would rather have little ra- 
patries here than that awful emptiness that 
comes to loved places when those who made 
and loved them have gone. I hope Mrs. H. 
can get him secured for us. He would be a 
wonderful tonic for a convalescent child — 
Pierre and his roses ! 

''I sometimes think that never blows so red 
The rose as where some buried Caesar bled; 
That every hyacinth the garden wears 
Dropt in her lap from some once lovely head." 

I don't know just why that came into my 
head, but the beauty of the place, its dead past 
and all the future that is on the way to it, sort 



66 The Children of France 

of fascinate me to-night. A French chateau, 
run by the Americans, for the care of little chil- 
dren victims of Prussian militarism! Was 
there ever such a soil before in which to plant 
a service? 

It is interesting to feel the thrill in the house 
to-night as the staff wait for the first children. 
However vain may be the military powers in 
this world, something very big and beautiful 
must come out of such a work as this. 

As I look across the valley the simset glow 
still shines on the spire of a tiny village church 
piled up against the sky. The beautiful quiet 
of the night coming on is so peaceful, it is dif- 
ficult to believe we are here because of war, 

and yet only yesterday in L I saw a little 

girl of twelve, blind in one eye, three fingers 
of her right hand gone and her right side in- 
jured, as the result of a loaded pencil given her 
by a German soldier. 

Good-night, dear. When the children come, 
I'll try to tell you about each one of them, the 
first ones at least. They are coming out from 
Lyon and we are going in after them, ten of 
them. I hope at least a few will come from 



And the Red Cross 67 

Evian because then they will find some of us 
friends here. 

I wish you could see the lights and shadows 
creeping from the woods just back of us. It 
is going to be a wonderful night, what C. used 
to call a "Henley night" — 

"the darkening air 
Thrills with a sense of the triumphing night, 
Night, with her train of stars 
And her great gift of sleep." 

Speaking of sleep, I must say just one thing 
more. We all have such strange dreams over 
here. Last night K. dreamed that over one 
hundred and fifty beds ordered for the chateau 
did not arrive and eight hundred children did, 
and Pierre planted them all in the greenhouses 
in rows, saying: "It's the best way for French 
children — ^in the spring they come up again in 
good condition." Voilal 



68 The Children of France 



Chateau des Holies, Ste. Foy VArgentiere, 

November 22, 1917 

Such a wait yesterday for those children! 
All day long. They did not leave Lyon until 
the four o'clock train and it was quite dark 
when they reached Ste. Foy. I wish I could 
give you an idea of that little group as they 
clung together on the platform. They had 
been told at Lyon that they were the first chil- 
dren to come to the American Hospital, and 
they must arrive clean, and they must be good. 
The result of such a declamation was the most 
intense and awestricken group. Dr. O., with 
his usual tact, broke the ice by picking up the 
smallest child and starting for the ambulance. 
ISIiss N. carried another and the rest came eag- 
erly. The ambulance men swung them into the 
car with a flourish that delighted them, and in 



And the Bed Cross 69 

a few minutes they were chattering away, ask- 
ing questions, and pressing up against the front 
to see where they were going. When they saw 
the lights of the chateau across the valley they 
began to quiet down a bit, and by the time 
they reached the chateau they were silent. A 
ride was one thing, a strange place was quite 
another matter. But our nurses and aides were 
so friendly and gay with them, that although 
they parted with their coats and caps rather 
reluctantly, they were too hungry to object to 
supper. Of course we all hovered around them. 
We could not help it. It was so splendid to 
have things really begin. 

The children's dining-room used to be the 
servants' hall. It is a fine room, all paneled in 
oak, with cupboards lining the walls, and a big 
fireplace. Mrs. H. has low tables and little 
benches for the children, and the tables are cov- 
ered with a checker-board blue and white tile' 
that makes them pretty and easy to keep clean. 

How they enjoyed that supper! Many 
smiles began to come from all but little Jean. 
He refused to eat. He did not cry, but kept 
asking for his brother who had not been sent 
with him. His head was bandaged and his 



70 TJie Children of France 

hands covered with sores, a most miserable 
looking little fellow. He just sat there, look- 
ing at us all and asking for his "frere." When 
the other children were through little Jean still 
sat there ; so we left him with one of the nurses, 
and when he was alone, he ate his supper 
quickly, she said. 

Then came the "clean-up" and examination 
of them all. As much as is known about them 
came with them on their cards. I am going 
to give you as much as we know of the first 
group. I shall not have time probably to do 
it for the later ones, time gets so full, but those 
ten will probably be more or less typical of our 
children. 

Marie is the youngest, four years old; her 
eyes are almost closed with sores and her ears 
are even worse. Her father has been killed in 
the war and her mother has just died in the 
hospital at Chambery. At Evian she has two 
little brothers and a grandmother. 

Jean is next; he is five years old. The 
nurse found him literally covered with abscesses 
from the skin disease he has, and the back of 
his head is in bad condition. No wonder he 
could not eat at first. His mother is dead, his 



And the Red Cross 71 

father a prisoner. He comes from the lovely 
Ardennes. 

Yvonne and Pierrette are sisters, ten and 
seven years old. Their mother is dead, their 
father has just been killed. Yvonne is sus- 
picious T. B. and Pierrette is convalescent 
from diphtheria. They come from the little 
village of Charmes in the Aisne. 

Louis is six years old. He comes from 
Arleux. His father is a prisoner. His mother 
was killed in January, 1915. He has three 
brothers and four sisters now at the orphanage 
in Lyon. The doctor says he is "loaded with 
infected glands." 

Little Etienne is five years old. He has 
just come through from Saint-Quentin where 
his father and older brother are now prisoners. 
His mother died last January. He is lucky; 
he has a twenty-year-old sister who was ra- 
patried with him, and she is going to work and 
look after him when he is well. He is in very 
bad condition from lack of food. 

AuRELiEN, AcHiLLE and Jules are broth- 
ers, five and a half, seven and eight. Their 
father is a soldier. They told us that so 
proudly. Their mother died the first year of 



72 The Children of France 

the war. They are all suffering from skin dis- 
eases. Poor Jules' eyes are so bad he cannot 
bear the light. 

VoLTAiEE is five years old. His father 
is a prisoner at Lens. His mother is at a hos- 
pital in Lille. His big sister Jeanne, eighteen 
and a half, was allowed to bring him and his 
two little brothers out; she will look after them. 
Voltaire is suffering just from the usual skin 
infection. He will be well soon. He has the 
sweetest dimples. 

The children were very tired last night, just 
fell into their beds and went right to sleep. 
They were all together in the big wards ; Miss 

N thought it best until they were more at 

home. No one cried but Jean, and he sobbed 
himself to sleep. No one could comfort him; 
he wanted his "frere." I think our nurses suf- 
fered more than he did. Miss A went in 

again and again to pat him, and sing to him, 
but in vain. It seemed such a long time be- 
fore the little moaning sob stopped. 

This morning they are all happy. The hour 
in the big bathroom, first a soak in the tub and 
then a shower, made them all shine, and they 
loved it. They want to know when they will 



And the Red Cross 78 

have it again. Even Jean smiled, although 
he had to be handled most carefully. 

As I came out of the bathroom a little while 
ago I almost knocked old Jean down. He was 
listening at the door. Clothilde says he has a 
"key-hole ear," — he has listened to everything 
for thirty years. One thing he is cross about 
is that he cannot listen, he does not under- 
stand. Well, I was delighted to find him lis- 
tening to the children. He looked quite pleas- 
ant. He endures me because I am not of the 
staff. I was rather hurt at his pleasure at 
the news that I am going off to Evian to- 
morrow and will not be back here until Christ- 
mas. He assured me it would be too cold to 
come here for Christmas. 

Well, so much for our first ten. We will 
have fifty here by Christmas. We will increase 
the numbers as rapidly as our supplies of coal 
reach us. We want one hundred and fifty 
here as soon as possible. 

The children are exploring the chateau to- 
day, tiptoeing around most eagerly. It is a 
fairy castle to them, I imagine. My room is 
in the big wing leading to the chapel and from 
this floor you can enter the little gallery of 



74 The Children of France 

the chapel. I love to look in upon it, it is such 
a beautiful bit of Gothic, and I did so a little 
while ago. The sunshine streamed in through 
the lovely windows across the altar. Below, 
quite close, little Yvonne was kneeling all 
alone, her poor thin shoulders shaking with 
sobs. I closed the gallery door without a 
sound. I have her card here in my hand. 
"Yvonne, ten years old. Mother dead. Fa- 
ther has just been killed. Probably tuber- 
cular." 

And yet only last week in Paris an Ameri- 
can newspaper woman said to me: "I am not 
yet convinced that civilian relief is wise. It 
seems to me to confuse the issue." 

Really there are times when language is 
most inadequate. The issue! What is the 
issue if it isn't saving the future generation, 
little Jeans, Maries and Yvonnes? The mili- 
tary? Yes, always. But what puts more 
courage into a fighting man than the thought 
that those he is fighting for are going to be 
cared for somewhere behind him? 

You see men who have been taken from 
"No-Man's Land" — and it is a terrible place, 
that land between the enemies' trenches and 



And the Red Cross 75 

our lines — but that little sobbing girl down 
there came from just as terrible a place, — "No- 
Child's Land," behind the enemies' trenches. 

I get so angry I cry. I always have done 
that, you remember, and I must not; but to 
my mind nothing is too good or too beautiful 
for these ten little un-decorated heroes who 
have escaped from prison. Be proud of your 
American Red Cross that stands for the chil- 
dren as well as for their soldier fathers and 
brothers. 

I feel sometimes as though I must shout 
that from the housetops. Do it for me, won't 
you? 



76 The Children of France 



Chateau des Halles, Ste. Foy VAr gentler e, 

Christmas Eve 

We came down from Paris last night. Such 
a crowd at the Gare de Lyon! It is a dra- 
matic episode leaving Paris these days. One 
always feels "the Lord knows what we may 
find, dear Lass, and the deuce knows what 
we may do," but you do get the train if you 
allow one hour to find which one it is and 
where your seat may be on it. Last night the 
station was crowded with soldiers "on permis- 
sion" for Christmas, going both ways, coming 
into Paris and leaving for the provinces. It 
was a thrilling push through the crowd. The 
French poilu carries so much on his back and 
over his shoulders that when he gets his bun- 
dles all on and covers all with his blue cape, 
he is a formidable object, and unless you have 



And the Bed Cross 77 

bundles suspended in a circle around your mid- 
dle to meet him with, you are decidedly 
squashed into a unique pattern when you get 
through. But such good nature, such Christ- 
mas cheer! To watch the crowd outside the 
gates last night, waiting for the soldiers to 
arrive, is a side of this war never to be forgot- 
ten, — mothers, and fathers awaiting for young 
boyish sons, wives, sweethearts! They fall 
upon their poilu and snatch his heavy bundles 
away, to carry for him. 

At Lyon this morning when we arrived, the 
station platforms were blue with men waiting 
for our train. I thought we should never get 
out, they piled into the train so rapidly, by way 
of the windows as well as doors, until you won- 
dered whether the old cars would stand it. 

We found Lyon very cold and covered with 
dirty snow packed down and frozen, so that 
we knew the ride out to the chateau was going 
to be an adventure. We left Lyon at two 
o'clock. I sat on the back of the little Ford 
ambulance. Such a ride ! After you grew used 
to the skidding and could forget the idea that 
the next lurch might land you in a snow drift, 
it was wonderful; the lovely winter landscape, 



78 The Children of France 

great fields of snow, the trees in heavy white 
mantles, the bushes, the hedges, all deep with 
the snow; the tops of the walls so evenly 
ledged ; it was exquisite. And on the road such 
lovely flashes of color; old men in red mufflers 
di'iving their big pink pigs, an old woman in 
her green shawl with her stick and cow, a sol- 
dier now and then in his long blue cape, and 
once an old man in a deep blue smock and an 
old red beret driving a donkey. Everywhere, 
lovely winter ; the everlasting beauty of it kept 
me warm; the soft pure landscape far away 
from the hideous war! 

The forests on the way to the chateau are 
of cedar and pine and some redwoods, and with 
the snow on them, it was fairy land full of 
Christmas trees. At last across the deep ravine 
the chateau came in sight. I remember how 
old Jean tried to discourage me about the win- 
ter when I was here before. I am so glad to 
be here now. 

Our trusty little Ford climbed the last long 
hill through the forest and we came up to the 
entrance on the broad terrace where I left old 
Pierre's roses — now a great stretch of deep, 
deep snow. 



And the Red Cross 79 

When we stepped into the great entrance 
hall, the loveliest sight was there, a beautiful 
Christmas tree all lighted standing just under 
the graceful curve of the great marble stair- 
case, the deep red of the carpet on the white 
marble, the lighted tree, the circle of little 
children sitting before it and our nurses lean- 
ing from the landing above on the stairway, 
and the candle light over all. It was, I am 
sure, the most exquisite picture the old hall 
had ever framed. Immediately it was ex- 
plained to us that these were not our children 
but the children from the little chateau village 
of Les Halles, who had come to bring Christ- 
mas gifts to our little rapatries, and Dr. O 

had decided to give them the old chateau wel- 
come on Christmas Eve. So the tree had been 
lighted for them, and the aides had served hot 
chocolate and cookies to these village children. 
Our own little patients could not join with 
them because we do not dare risk contagion 
out here. Our children are all in such weak- 
ened conditions from different causes that 
great care must be taken. The village teacher 
was here with the children and they sang a 
Christmas song. Don't you think it was dear 



80 The Children of France 

of our little village neighbors? I saw them 
waving to our children at the play-room win- 
dows as they went off down the snowy road 
under the Christmas trees. 

It was dark by four o'clock, and I had time 
for just one romp in the play-room before sup- 
per. There are fifty children now, and some 
of them so pathetically happy, some of them 
sick. They are so good and our aides have 
worked hard to train them. They marched 
down to supper to-night so proudly ; the small- 
est one marched with me. It w^as a picture; 
the low room, the leaded panes in the wide win- 
dows; outside, the winter dusk, snowy Christ- 
mas trees and high white drifts everywhere; 
inside, the warmth and cheer of the supper 
table and the happy, happy faces and the ex- 
cited voices, for the Noel was coming swiftly 
and the children knew it. 

It was six o'clock when they were all tucked 
in for the night in the big ward downstairs 
and the moon was up making a dream w^orld 
outside. As we took the lights away, one little 
boy asked to have the windows left opened 
wide so he could see "Pere Noel" pass by. 




z Q 



And the Red Cross 81 

And none of the older ones laughed, they all 
seconded his request. 

I slipped upstairs to see the sick children. 
It is so sad. Little Gaston, two years old, so 
sweet and fair, is struggling with a bad bron- 
chitis and a severe dysentery. His mother is 
sick in Evian. He does not smile and just 
lies there with a little dumb look in his face. 
No one can make him smile but his brother 
Maurice, who is downstairs. The other very 
sick child is Albert, two years old; he has had 
whooping cough, then pneumonia, now bad 
dysentery, and to-night Dr. O fears an- 
other pneumonia. His father is uncertain ; his 
mother is on her way from Evian with four 
other children and will be lodged in the vil- 
lage near here. I hope she gets here soon. 
This little mite is pretty sick and yet he still 
has resistance and his nurse. Miss A , in- 
sists that he is going to live. 

After dinner to-night we all gathered in the 
office to get the toys ready for the Christmas 
tree. I shall never forget that scene; only 
the soft lamp light in the beautiful paneled 
room with its Italian marble fireplace at one 
end, piled high with great burning logs, the 



82 The Children of France 

lights reflected on the black carved oaken 
chests, the high-backed chairs, the big tables, 
two of them covered with gay toys, dolls, 
wooden animals, horns, balls, carts and wagons 
— the kind one sees on the roads ; and our nurses 
and aides with their white caps and soft white 
collars open at their throats, their eager inter- 
ested faces as they chose two gifts apiece for 
their children. "Jean — Yvonne must have 
that;" Louis must have a "donkey," and every 

now and then Dr. O , with his teasing Irish 

wit, would throw in a remark slighting to some 
one's particular pet, and then such a shout of 
protest as rewarded him. 

It was wonderful the way these workers for- 
got their own homesickness and flung them- 
selves into the Christmas at this snowbound 
chateau. The blinds were not closed and the 
wonderful moonlight streamed into the warm 
Christmas glow of that beautiful room with 
the color of the gifts, the faces, the voices, 
sometimes the laughter very close to tears 
when some one remembered "last year at 
home." We sat until the fire burned low and 
the room grew too cold for comfort. I came 
up to my own fire and have written all this, and 



And the Red Cross 83 

now my log has broken and rolled down on 
the hearth and I must stop. 

Well, we always said little children make 
Christmas, and to-night the beauty of the old 
winter world and such a service as this for 
little children has brought back the old pre- 
cious meaning of the Christmas tide and the 
ugly side has vanished into the shadows for the 
moment. 



84) The Children of France 



Christmas night 

The children were awake early this morn- 
ing; you could hear their eager voices in the 
distance. The first thing for the Christmas 
day was the Mass to be celebrated in the beau- 
tiful chateau Chapel. The old cure from the 
village was the celebrant and every one was 
welcome. It was pretty cold in the little 
chapel, but all the well children were warmly 
wrapped up in their winter coats and sweaters, 
mufflers and mittens. It was very touching — 
their joy in the familiar service — the little 
homeless children kneeling and joining so beau- 
tifully in the service they knew so well, and 
the old cure with his tender voice, his fine face, 
his proud wearing of the beautiful vestments 
belonging to the chateau. Two little rapatrie 



And the Red Cross 85 

boys, Lucien and Marcel, who had been altar 
boys back in their loved village before this 
terrible war, helped as of old. They wore no 
robes, just their winter coats and mufflers, but 
I shall never forget the little figures kneeling 
close to the old cure and carrying their part 
of the service through with such earnest dig- 
nity. It must have made them feel less home- 
less. Some of us knelt in the gallery above 
and looked down upon it all — the children, the 
village folk, a soldier standing at the back look- 
ing at the altar with its lighted candles, and 
over it all the tender voice of the old cure. I 
noticed Yvonne; her sad old little face looked 
almost happy, and she did not look so pale. 

Then came breakfast, which happily for chil- 
dren in France on Christmas day is not a long 
meal, and then the tree. Just as the children 
reached the tree all lighted and filled with gifts, 
old Santy, the real genuine American Santa 
Claus, came rollicking down the old staircase, 
and how the children shouted: "Bon jour, Pere 
Noel, bon jour, Pere Noel!" He was a won- 
derful "Pere Noel." He shook hands with 
them all; he hugged them all; he called for a 
song and four tiny boys sang with a will. He 



86 The "Children of France 

called for a inarch and six more marched and 
sang, led by the gay old gentleman himself. 
Then he ordered his staff to unload his tree. 
He settled his glasses on his jolly red nose with 
great care and began the serious business of 
reading French names; and what a fuss he 
made about each little gift and what funny 
mistakes he made. The children laughed until 
they cried, and so did the rest of us. The am- 
bulance boys guarded the candles and helped 
reach for the toys, and presently Santa Claus 
vanished up the stairway with the gifts for 
the sick children in a pack on his back and 
Miss A and I flew along with him. 

Albert and Gaston were pretty sick, Albert 
too sick to know, so we just tucked his toys 
in the foot of the bed. Gaston stretched out 
his arms for the doll, but no smile. 

Jules sits on a chair, helpless, with patient 
face, sweet smile and his grave brown eyes. 
He is thirteen and alone. His father was killed 
in the war, his mother held by the Germans, 
and he is completely paralyzed. He was so 
pleased with his books. If he had not been 
exposed to scarlet fever on his way here, he 



And the Red Ci'oss 87 

would have been carried downstairs for the 
tree. 

Madeleine, a tall pale child of eleven, was 
so happy over her paint box, — not for herself, 
oh no, but for her little brother when he comes ; 
she does not know where he is. She has had 
glands in her throat and a high temperature. 
Her father has been killed in the war, her 
mother is crazy with grief and hardship, the 
little brother is lost! 

Oh, I can't tell you all the heart-breaking 
records to-night, it would make too sad a story 
and the day has been full of joy in spite of 
everything. The playroom has been a gay 
place all day. At luncheon stern old Jean 
showed he liked us a little. There was a won- 
derful basket of holly and mistletoe from the 
woods in the Estate on the table and in the 
center stood a little American flag. How we 
cheered! Old Jean smiled at last, just a grim 
flash of a smile, but I think he is thawing fast, 
for our dessert was a wonderful French sweet 
— Christmas logs they are called — long brown 
chocolate rolls with wreaths of cream festoon- 
ing them! 

So it has been a beautiful, strange Christ- 



88 The Children of France 

mas; the wonderful winter landscape — the 
snow has fallen all day — and the happy chil- 
dren safe and warm inside. I spent the bed- 
time hour with the children in the big ward 
to-night and such a happy chatter! When 
they were all in their beds and we were ready 
to leave them, a small boy near me said: 
"Bonne nuit, Madame," and held out his arms. 
I held him tight for a moment and then all 
down the long shadowy ward from each little 
bed came the call: "Bonne nuit, Madame," 
and twenty pairs of arms were stretched out 
to me. It was Christmas night and they 
wanted to be hugged and kissed. Well, I 
didn't miss any and I am probably pretty 
germy, but it was the best of the day. 

We have had another evening by the fire. 
The wind is howling around the chateau and 
driving the snow against the windows. Mile. 

M told us tales of Brittany, old folks tales 

and legends. England, Rhodesia and fourteen 
American States were represented in our circle 
around the fire. We did not talk of home. 

As I came to my room a little while ago, 
I saw one of our ambulance boys come softly 
out of the room where little Albert is fighting 



And the Red Cross 89 

for his life. Tears were in his eyes; I was 

glad of my dim pocket light. H is a big, 

fat, lovable boy who keeps a cigar store in his 
home town. He was refused by the army for 
overweight. He works like a slave for us, 
diets hard and worships the children. Albert 
is his special pet. 

In many ways it is most difficult to believe 
that this is Christmas night, it is all so strange 
and different ; but in all the big warm essential 
things it has been a wonderful day. I some- 
times think the American Red Cross is doing 
quite as much for the workers as for France. 



90 The Children of France 



Chateau des Halles, Ste. Foy VArgentiere, 

December 26, 1917 

Still snowing. The hedgerows of yester- 
day have vanished. Early this morning two 
oxen strolled by with a snow-plow, and opened 
our road so the boys could get the cars out of 
the garage (Pierre's greenhouse). Albert has 

been very low all day. Mathilde, W 's 

favorite, has developed scarlet fever. She is 
a tiny scrap of a girl, six years old, with a big 
gland on one side of her neck. Her father is 
in the trenches and her mother is dead. But 

W from Michigan loves her. He has 

taught her to say, "Good-morning, INIon. Ray- 
mond, I lofe you verry mush." Luckily she has 
been under observation since her arrival so 
none of the other children have been exposed. 
It is not pleasant, as this is for convalescent 



And the Red Cross 91 

children, but until we get a hospital in Lyon, 
where our children can be under observation 
for two weeks before coming to us out here, 
this is liable to happen. 

Clothilde, the old maid-servant, had such a 

funny bout with H this morning. Miss 

N sent H for some dry wood for the 

fireplace in the room of one of the nurses who 
is not very well. He was gone some time. 
When he came back carrying an enormous box 
of dry wood, Clothilde was at his elbow scold- 
ing and protesting as fast and as loud as she 

could. H smiled pleasantly: "I don't 

know what the matter is, Miss N . Evi- 
dently I have done something Clothilde 
doesn't like." All the time Clothilde was 
shouting in French that that was her own par- 
ticular wood that Monsieur Mangini had 
given her before he died, for her laundry 
stove, and that Monsieur H was steal- 
ing it. 

All the while H went right on piling 

the wood on the fire and talking sweetly to 
Clothilde in English. 

"That's all right, Clothilde; I know you are 
angry. I don't mind a bit. If I only under- 



92 The Children of France 

stood what you said I could do something 
about it, but I don't, so there, there," — pat- 
ting her on the shoulder. "You'll get over it 
and like me again." And before we stopped 

laughing H .had Clothilde smiling and 

offering to get him a cup of "chocolat." 

Really H is worth his full weight in 

gold. He never does anything but smile and 
keep perfectly good-natured, while Jean or 
Marie or Clothilde rage at something he has 
done and he talks soothingly in English and 

it ends in their doing exactly what H 

wants. I can't give any idea of how adorably 
funny he is, and this morning, when every one 
was blue because of Albert and Mathilde, the 
scene over the wood saved us all. Clothilde 

simply had to laugh when H patted her 

nice dry wood and said: "Now you know, 
Clothilde, that's tres beaucouj)" (H pro- 
nounces it trays howcups always, just to be 
funny) and it was too much for Clothilde; she 
broke into a giggle. 

This morning I helped with the baths. Six 
at a time get their scrubbings, first tub and 
then shower. I drew Jacques-Henri, eight 
years old, from St. Quentin, father a prisoner. 



And the Red Cross 93 

mother missing. Jacques has a bad heart and 
he is the strangest blue color — it is most diffi- 
cult to determine when he is clean. 

This afternoon the ambulance went to the 
next village to get Albert's mother. She ar- 
rived from Evian at noon, and in the dark and 
the storm it was difficult to find her, but about 
five o'clock Burns came back triumphant with 
the poor frightened mother. She herself has 
been sick in Evian with the four other chil- 
dren. She looked haggard and worn and when 
she stood by the little bed she said nothing. 
Great tears rolled down her face; she patted 
the covers, but did nothing more. The nurse 
was working over Albert, his big dark eyes 
looking up at her without a gleam of recogni- 
tion. 

In such moments I long to have you share, 
not the hardships of the life here, for there are 
many — cold for instance. The furnace broke 
down for our side of the chateau over a week 
ago and the cold has been terrible and some 
are suffering badly from chilblains ; the wards 
are warm and the dining-room, but that is all. 
It will be three weeks before the damage is 
repaired, and in the meantime water-pipes are 



94 The Children of France 

freezing. No, I don't want you even to think 
of the hardships, but I long to have you see 
some of the service given by the beloved 
A. R. C. you work so hard for at home. That 
scene in Albert's room — the warm, beautiful 
room, the little bed, the tiny patient so tenderly 
and splendidly cared for, plenty of warm blan- 
kets, clean linen, drugs, a competent, devoted 
nurse, and the good doctor, the poor pale 
mother in her dark shabby clothes, looking at 
all that service as though she had stepped into 
a dream-world, and oh, the gratefulness! 

Dr. O had told her that Albert was a 

very sick baby; she knew that, and yet she 
looked hungrily at the little face and said, "Oh, 
but he looks so nice; his eyes look so fine." 
(They had been very sore when he first came.) 
"You have helped him so much. He looks 
much better than when he left me at Evian. 
Surely he will not die." 

It is almost midnight. She is still sitting 
there by the bed, her figure silhouetted against 
the window, the winter moonlight filling the 
room. She wears the heavy shawl of the vil- 
lage woman, and no head covering. Miss 
A wanted her to go to bed, she is so tired, 



And the Red Cross 95 

but she did not want to leave Albert. She 
has been crooning a little French lullaby very, 

very softly and Miss A thinks the baby 

is in a natural sleep. 

I seem wide awake. I can't get that mother 
in there out of my mind, and there are thou- 
sands of them, homeless and alone, clinging 
to their children and trying to go on. Brave! 

Sometimes you seem to ache with all the suf- 
fering around you. One of our helpers here 
is an English woman. She asked our Bureau 
in Paris to give her work among the children 
until she was brave enough to go home. She 
has just lost her husband and she spent three 
weeks before his death in a military hospital 
just back of the lines. She is still a bad 
sleeper, and we have been talking here by the 
fire. I don't think I have lived through more 
difficult moments than during her attempt to 
tell me the sad story, the fire light on her sad, 
strong face, the tears rolling down her cheeks, 
but her voice steady. "It wasn't my own suf- 
fering or my husband's that was so hard to 
bear, but the terrible sufi'ering all around me," 
she said ; "sixty and seventy men a day brought 
to the little tent hospital like logs; the bleed- 



96 The Children of France 

ing and the agony. And at night I heard men 
sob like children, men who had been the bravest 
and the most cheerful all daj^" And j^et when 
I said: "Yes, it is a terrible price," she flashed 
back at me: "Not too great if we can free the 
world of the power that planned such horrors." 

One can't say much. I still feel we have 
not earned a right even to offer sympathy, but 
she knows my love of England and when we 
talked of familiar places we both love, I think 
it helped a little. 

I have been down the hallway again to Al- 
bert's room. Miss A says he is better. 

The present crisis is over. His mother is sit- 
ting there asleep in her chair, one hand clutch- 
ing the blankets of the little bed as if even in 
her sleep Albert must not lose her touch. 

I feel like shouting. Another trench held 
by the A. R. C. against the enemy! 



And the Red Cross 97 



Evian, France, 
February 5, 1918 

It has been a wet day, cold and pouring rain 
— just about the worst kind of a day for these 
poor homeless people. This morning as that 
bedraggled crowd of old women and little chil- 
dren, trying to protect their precious bundles 
from the wet, went through the street, it 
seemed the saddest convoy I have watched. 
Rain can be so cruel ; it seemed to increase my 
wrath at the Boche to-day. I cannot bear to 
have these people meet anything but sunshine 
here. The first group that attracted my atten- 
tion was of five children, such nice looking 
children all clinging together in a frightened 
kind of way, without any older person along; 
so I joined them and that little group has filled 
the day for me. 

Oh, if I can only give you a picture of this 



98 The Children of France 

little family. The oldest is Cyr, a boy of six- 
teen, a tall delicate looking lad, with big deep 
wistful eyes, and a sense of responsibility for 
the other four children that makes you ache. 

The oldest girl, Victoire, is fourteen years 
old, and of all little mothers you have ever 
seen she was the most real. She held tight to 
Jean-Baptiste, a pale little four-year-old boy, 
with shining yellow hair and dark eyes, quite 
the lord and master of the children who adore 
him. 

Then came Juliette, a little elf -like creature 
of nine, and Louis, a seven-year-old, who is 
coughing his head off with whooping cough. 
Cyr told me the story after they were all safely 
in our hospital. They come from Clay-le- 
Chateau, not far from Lens. Their father is 
in the trenches and they have not heard from 
him for two years. Their mother was killed 
before their eyes on January 24, 1916. They 
were all in the cave under their house while 
the shelling was going on and the little maid- 
servant had not come down, so mother went up 
the ladder to find her, Cyr said, and just as 
she reached the top she was struck and her 
body fell back into the cave before the children. 



And the Red Cross 99 

He told the story quite simply, with a dull 
sort of ache in his voice and a matter of f act- 
ness I can never forget. You can't ask ques- 
tions of these poor children, but I gather they 
have been in well-to-do circumstances. Vic- 
toire asked me if I ever used an electric iron, 
saying they had one at home, and they speak 
of maid and nurse. It all makes it more 
poignant to me in many ways, what that poor 
man in the trenches is thinking, the agony of 
not knowing what has become of his family. 
The effort to communicate with him began this 
afternoon. The children are so eager to be 
claimed. 

They have heard a great deal from people 
on the train about being claimed at Evian, and 
Victoire said to me with tears standing deep 
in her blue eyes: "We belong to father, and 
mother said, if we ever got here, we would 
surely find him." 

Fortunately Cyr knew the regiment and 
company, and we have every hope of finding 
him if he is ahve. 

Little Jean-Baptiste is in the worst condi- 
tion in many ways. He was born in April, 
1914, and he has a bad heart. Victoire says 



100 Tlie Children of France 

he has just had chicken-pox. Altogether the 
little fellow is in very poor condition. Vic- 
toire herself is just "nerves" and has been ex- 
posed of course to the chicken-pox and whoop- 
ing cough. Juliette has the chicken-pox now. 

The one joy in their hearts to-night is that 
they are all together. Poor little Victoire was 
so afraid she would be left out because she was 
not actually sick at present. 

These children need a month or so at the 
Red Cross Convalescent Hospital at that 
lovely Chateau des Halles. They are the kind 
that will respond to all the beauty of it, and 
Cyr needs it so. I don't know whether he is 
tubercular or not, but he looks so delicate. He 
says his oldest brother is a prisoner in Flan- 
ders, and that his mother was eager to hear 
from him. Cyr asked me if I thought he could 
find a way of communicating with his brother. 

That is what has impressed me so deeply 
about this family. They all seem to have just 
one desire — to do all the things their mother 
had talked to them about before she was killed 
over a year ago. They have clung together, 
living in the cellar of their home and then in 
other people's cellars as the line moved back, 



And the Red Cross 101 

and probably going through one terror after 
another; and yet they have come back filled 
with what mother wanted them to do. The 
record Cyr gave says the father's name is Jean- 
Baptiste and the mother was Hortense, thirty- 
five years old, when the bomb ended it all and 
her brave body rolled back into the cave be- 
fore her children. 

Oh, I hope the miracles are happening and 
that somehow that brave soul knows her chil- 
dren are safe to-night in this big splendid hos- 
pital. As for the father, I suppose it is too 
much to ask to have him alive and well. I think 
Cyr is hopeless, but Victoire thinks "father will 
answer." I sided with Victoire just to encour- 
age Cyr, but when I think of the two years 
that have passed since they have had any word 
from him, my belief in miracles becomes very 
tense — I don't know! 

Well, there have been dozens of other chil- 
dren to-day, but I haven't time to record them 
all. This family the nurses took particular 
interest in, and let me trail around and be close 
to them to-day, and I think I can help the 
time pass until the answer comes from "fa- 
ther," if it comes. 



102 The Children of France 



Evian, France, 
February/ 6, 1918 

My little family have been very quiet all day 
from exhaustion, the reaction after the excite- 
ment of yesterday. Victoire has the chicken- 
pox to-night and she is delighted. She seems 
to think it settles her securely in the hospital; 
but they have slept most of the time, Cyr, as 
though he had not really slept for weeks. He 
feels that the children are safe and he can for- 
get for a time. We told them it might be a 
week or two before they hear from their fa- 
ther, so they did not expect anything to-day, 
although Cyr asked the question when he woke 
up late this afternoon. I find myself so in- 
tense about it, I feel that a father has just got 
to be produced. 

It is still raining and both convoys have been 



And the Red Cross 103 

crowded, about seven hundred and fifty in 
each. Our hospital has received twenty-eight 
contagious cases to-day and the one hundred 
and seventy-five beds are full to-night. 

But I am all "wrought up," as Martha used 
to say, about the most distressing bit of trag- 
edy I have witnessed in any of my trips to 
Evian. We have to-night in the babies' room 
on the non-contagious floor of the building, 
four Boche babies abandoned by their moth- 
ers to-day. Oh, I have had a lot of theories 
about this particular wretchedness, but I am 
in one big muddle about it all to-night. I saw 
those mothers and I can't blame one of them 
for leaving these children behind. All four of 
the women found letters here from their soldier 
husbands, eagerly waiting for their return. 

One woman said, "How can I go to him 
with this Boche child?" That was IMadeleine's 
mother; Madeleine is a year old, a poorly de- 
veloped little creature with a club foot. "If 
only she were pretty!" The poor mother wept 
her heart out, came back three or four times 
to change her mind about leaving the little 
thing, but at last went off. She was a gentle 
dark-eyed young woman of about thirty, I 



104 The Children of France 

should say. Her two children had died the 
first year of the war. She couldn't take that 
child to her people, and she couldn't bear to 
leave it alone. It was the crudest struggle 
you can imagine, and you felt so helpless; 
there was nothing you could say or do. 

Isabelle is ten months old, poorly nourished, 
but a rather nice, fair little baby. Her moth- 
er's face was like a stone; it expressed noth- 
ing. She was perfectly silent and calm. The 
baby showed care and niceness in its clothing 
and clung to its mother. She was gentle with 
it but firm. You felt that her decision had 
been made long ago, back perhaps in her lovely 
village of Revin in the Ardennes, and that 
nothing could move her now. I noticed when 
she consented to leaving an address, she took 
her husband's letter she had just received from 
next her heart. It may be, with her blouse 
open at the throat, that was an easy place to 
carry it safely, but her eyes as she turned the 
pages and the deep red that went over her 
dark stony face, made me feel that the in- 
tensity of her feeling for her fighting man, who 
was alive and waiting for her, far outweighed 
the claims of this child she had brought in. 



And the Red Cross 105 

Eugenie is a scrap of five months, with a 
strange deformity of head; and the fourth is 
the only boy, Robert, four months old, with 
bad, discharging eyes, both too young and too 
strange looking to have won much of a place 
in their mothers' hearts. 

Eugenie's mother said: "I am sorry, but I 
cannot take her. She is saved, though ; she has 
been baptized Catholic." 

We found they had all been baptized Cath- 
olic. Strange! isn't it? 

It isn't just the fact of illegitimacy. It's the 
awful bitterness and hatred that is behind such 
scenes. I look at the poor babies, who are so 
helpless and pathetic, and I think I have never 
seen anything more shocking; but, oh, the 
mothers! That any human being has been 
forced into such a hideous struggle, is what is 
so hard to bear. And there you are. But one 
great big fact remains clear, that the power 
that brought this on a peaceful world has got 
to be crushed, now. . . . 

Later. 

I was interrupted just here, and in the mean- 
time I have seen another tragedy, worse than 



106 The Children of France 

all the rest — a mother, practically dying of 
tuberculosis, with four children clinging to her ; 
Laure, a pale girl of eight; Albert, five years 
old; Albertina, four years old, and a baby, 
fifteen months old. Laure explained that this 
little Jules was her mother's baby, not her 
brother, but a Boche. The quiet scorn of that 
eight-year-old girl cut you like a knife. The 
poor mother, only twenty-eight years old, is 
the saddest victim I have seen. She has been 
sent to the tuberculosis hospital at Thonon, 
and the children are here, as the baby has the 
measles and is tubercular and little Albertina's 
card is marked "Suspicious T. B." They were 
brought to the A. R. C. hospital. 

This is a night when I am in perfect sym- 
pathy with our soldiers, who are so eager for 
hand-to-hand encounters that, unless watched, 
they throw discretion to the winds. As I came 
back to my room something happened to make 
it possible to go on. 

I peeked in at Jean-Baptiste. He knows 
three prayers by heart which Victoire has 

taught him. He was kneeling in Miss A 's 

lap with his arms tight around her neck saying 
them, and the little rascal was making it just 



And the Red Cross 107 

as long a ceremony as possible, with intermin- 
able entr'acts. Victoire from behind the iso- 
lation curtain was trying to hurry him, but 
to no avail. If you could see the nurse you 
wouldn't blame Jean-Baptiste. I love to think 
that thousands of these poor kiddies are going 
to have stowed away in the happy side of their 
memory boxes the love and devotion of our 
American Red Cross nurses. 

After you finish reading this, won't you just 
hug blessed Joey and David kind of especially 
for me. I have seen so many little chaps just 
their ages to-day. To be four years old, to 
be six years old, and alone, "Mother killed by 
bomb, father in the trenches"; the hundreds of 
cards on which it says that, catalogued in this 
little town here to-day, must he answered by 
the whole civilized world. 



108 The Children of France 



Evian, France, 
February 7, 1918 

Thank goodness, the sun came out to-day 1 
I was so depressed last night, as you know, 
that I was a dangerous member of the com- 
munity. But the warm sunshine and the fun 
of taking some of the children out on the sun 
porch cheered me up. I stayed away from the 
convoys to-day. I felt I was too full to wit- 
ness any more and remain useful. 

The children love the sunny roof from which 
they look down on the lake and across to 
Lausanne and the high mountains to the south- 
east. We took Andre out first. He is a most 
bewitching little chap of three and a half, 
whom nothing can kill apparently. He has 
had whooping cough, chicken-pox and measles, 
and still smiles. His mother is held a prisoner 



And the Bed Cross 109 

by the Germans in Lieburg ; his father has been 
killed. He came through all carefully labeled 
to be delivered to his aunt, but she can't be 
found as yet, so Andre continues to be spoiled 
by the nurses. But he is so sweet and so jolly 
that he is a tonic to the others. 

This morning he pranced around making 
faces and doing his best to make dear Fernand 
laugh. Fernand is fourteen years old; he 
comes from Belgium, where his father is a 
prisoner; his mother was killed in 1914. The 
boy has a bad heart and an infected foot. He 
brought just one connection out and that was 
his brother serving in the Belgian Army. 
This brother had been written to, and only yes- 
terday the letter from his commandant came in- 
forming us that L had "died for France 

in the battle of Bois St. Mard, October 1914." 

Fernand has said nothing — just holds the 
precious paper in his hand, and occasionally 
screws his face down into his pillows. So we 
are glad of Andre's pranks. 

I think Fernand will make friends with 
Felix; he is just about the same age, with the 
same tragedy — father died at Mons, his mother 
killed by a bomb in Lievin when walking along 



110 The Children of France 

the street with Felix. Felix has a bad heart, 
and looks so sort of knocked out by life. 

I don't see how the lads survive such shocks. 
I should think the future medical specialty 
would be hearts — broken, smashed, bleeding 
hearts to be mended out of the wreck of this 
awful war. 

I wish I could make you see another star 
performer we have here named Mathilda 
Zonella. She is six years old and has a gen- 
erous supply of T. B. glands. She has been 
in isolation with Eugene, aged seven, who has 
rickets and is dull and shuffles about. But he 
adores IMathilda and she bosses him around as 
she does everybody. Some days she won't no- 
tice him at all and then he is very sad, but still 
adores her. She is a little queen. We don't 
know anything about her, but her name and 
the wi-itten instructions on a card around her 
neck, "Please keep her safe," and the moth- 
er's name and the town she sent the child from. 
Evidently Mathilda is some one very precious 
— she certainly acts the part. This morning 
on the roof she pulled her chair quite apart 
from the rest of us and sat there rocking and 
singing to the Teddy bear she loves, and at 




AI.I. POSED FOR HER PICTURE. LITTLE GIRL OF THE "eCOLE MATER- 

NEI.LE" WHERE THE AMERICAN RED CROSS PROVIDES FOOD TO 

SUPPLEMENT THE LUNCH OF THE SCHOOL CANTEEN 



And the Bed Cross 111 

every laugh from the rest looked most disap- 
provingly at us, but said nothing. It was 
really too ridiculous for words, to see her. 

While we were out there we had a great 
excitement for Solange. Do you remember 
the little nine-year-old girl I told you about, 
who had lost her mother in the flight from Lille 
and who had not seen her father since the war 
began? Well, he came while we were sitting 
there in the sun. Just another miracle. He 
walked right out on the porch unannounced, 
and I was thankful Solange was not a heart 
case or she would have died of joy. After 
he had held Solange tight in his arms for about 
an hour, it was very sweet to see this French 
poilu go out shyly to the other children. He 
sensed their tragedies and you felt he was do- 
ing a lovely bit of fathering for some unknown 
comrades. He talked to Fernand and Felix 
quite as he would to soldiers and you could see 
the boys bracing up under his kindness. 

He had received the letter about Solange 
just when his permission was due, so he had 
come at once. He told me he would wait here 
his full time in hopes that his wife may come 
through. Then he is willing we should send 



112 The Children of France 

Solange to the Chateau des Halles to be made 
strong and well. He was most touchingly 
grateful. He kept saying: "You Americans 
are doing this for our children? How splen- 
did! I did not know." 

Late this afternoon another glad and sad 
thing happened. The father of another family 
here of three, Marie, three and a half years 
old, Jules, five, and Kruger, seven, came hur- 
rying into the hospital. Kruger was the only 
one who seemed to know him; they had not 
seen him for three years, and the younger ones 
did not remember him, of course. That man's 
joy over finding them — he had come of his 
own volition just to see if his children and wife 
had come through — and his grief over the rec- 
ord Kruger's card showed, that the mother had 
died three months ago in the hospital at Saint 
Quentin, was really the most pitiable strug- 
gle I have ever seen. He just hugged those 
children close, with the tears rolling down his 
face, and then when he saw that was fright- 
ening them, he would ti*y to laugh and brush 
away the tears and talk to them cheerfully. 

So our sun porch this morning had many 
aspects, sad and glad. I shall hate to leave 



And the Red Cross 113 

to-morrow. I am going over to the A. R. C. 
Convalescent Hospital near Lyon, dear Cha- 
teau des Halles. We have one hundred and 
seven children there getting well and rested. 
Gabrielle is making me an Easter card, cross 
stitched "Happy Easter," Evian, and then her 
name. You remember she is the little girl of 
seven who lost her left eye in a bombardment. 
What would this old world do without these 
youngsters who cling to life with the tenacity 
of surgeon's plaster? 

P. S. — I found Irene crying in her small bed 
as I put my head in to say good-night. Irene 
is eight years old; her father was killed in 
1914; her mother died of tuberculosis in 1917. 
Irene was crying because the boy in the next 
bed had said she was an orphan. She says she 
isnt an orphan, she has a sister. Bless her 
heart! 



114 The Children of France 



Somewhere in France, 
February — , 1918 

Some day you can know "where" and 
"when" — for the present all I can give is the 
"what" of this thrilling experience. The real- 
ness and the unrealness of this war world are 
inextricably bound up together. The crowds 
of tired poilus asleep on the station platforms 
as we left Paris are very real. One tall fine 
looking French gentleman was saying good-by 
to his son quite close to our compartment win- 
dow this morning. Over and over again he 
kissed that young officer of his good-by, on 
both cheeks, then stood with his arm around 
him until the train started and the young fel- 
low jumped on to the moving carriage. That 
father's face seemed to start us off with a sense 
of the great reality, the nearness of Death. 



And the Bed Ci'os-s 115 

You knew by the mourning bands on the fa- 
ther's sleeve that he had already given of his 
own. He saw only the boy those few moments 
there. I can never forget the agony of that 
good-by. These French fathers have an in- 
tensity about their sons this fourth year of 
the war that seems to wither you; the ache of 
it all! 

It's a beautiful valley, the valley of the 
IMarne, and if one did not constantly see the 
black crosses along the roads and in the fields 
one could never connect it with war. Those 
crosses are so real; the artificial wreath of 
flowers, loved by the French, hangs on the 
crosses, the only unreal touch. To many I saw 
a little pathway worn and fresh flowers on the 
ground. The little village gardens are begin- 
ning to be green again. Constantly as we 
passed slowly along, a real American smile 
greeted us, a wave of the hand, a cheer from 
a group of khaki-clad, broad-hatted soldiers 
who recognized our American "Hello." 

I can't believe it, my dear, that our troops 
are here in France, thousands of them, settling 
down into the soldier's life. You have seen 
them march away from American towns, I 



116 The Children of France 

have been here too long for that. I just sud- 
denly find them crowding station platforms, 
pouring down village streets in France, and 
I am a foolish old goose about it. Things get 
blurry and I have a perfectly absurd sense 
of personal possession. I respect officers' 
"Reserves," but no mere private escapes me. 
I ask him his name and home address and write 
his mother that I have seen her boy and that 
he looks happy and well — perfectly sentimen- 
tal, I know, and I can't explain why I do it, 
but I am getting some wonderful "thank 
you's" from home. We American Red Cross 
women here of respectable age ought to mother 
these American boys, don't you think so ? 

I longed to get off the train this morning 
at every stop, but we had to content ourselves 
with hand shakes through the windows. We 

reached T at two o'clock. It has been a 

brilliant day, warm sunshine and blue sky. 
The station was crowded with soldiers; there 
was the noise and hum of voices, the buzz of 
aeroplanes overhead, the busy life of the town 
going on as usual, and the distant sound of 
guns, just about as unreal, then, as the arti- 
ficial wreaths along the road. 



And the Red Cross 117 

We went down the winding street across 
an ancient drawbridge to the town, and 
close by the square we found the funny little 
hotel crowded with officers, ambulance men, 
Y. M. C. A. men, and nurses here and there. 
It could not be war ; it seemed impossible. We 
found some rooms and left our bags and 
started off to see our Red Cross hospital for 
children here which we started in August, 

1917, in connection with Prefet M 's 

refugee home for the children of these poor 
little gassed villages in this lovely country. 

Naughty boys and girls of the War Zone 
who won't wear their gas masks, or are too 
little, are collected into these refugee cen- 
ters, and the need of a hospital for them was 
so great that it was the first one our Children's 
Bureau started six months ago. 

Just as we were getting into the ambulance 
to drive the two miles to the hospital, the siren 
began blowing and every one rushed into the 
streets to watch the big German taube sailing 
in the blue sky overhead, with a dozen little 
puffs of smoke breaking all around it like wads 
of cotton. That siren meant we were all to 
get out of the streets so as not to be struck by 



118 The Children of France 

flying pieces of shrapnel, but it seemed to me 
to have just the opposite effect. I found my- 
self calmly watching the fight as though it were 
quite detached from anything on earth. 

We waited a while until the big taube sailed 
away and we went off across the river be- 
tween the two forts, to the hilltop where the 
hospital and refugees are. 

It is a wonderful location, an old army bar- 
racks converted into a home for four hundred 
and eighty children and about fifty mothers, 
and a hospital of ninety-five beds for the use 
of the whole district. The children were all 
out in the sunshine having their bread and 
chocolate. As the hilltop is between the two 
forts, the shelling goes on daily and the chil- 
dren have to be kept inside out of the svay while 
the air fights go on. We have made it plain to 
the Germans that this is a hospital for children, 
but who can tell? Why hesitate to bomb the 
children when you have already attempted to 
gas them? Oh, this mad psychology of the 
German military staff ! 

I was much interested in two groups of chil- 
dren, those who had been there since August 
and those who had just come. I felt a big Red 



And the Red Cross 119 

Cross pride in the first group, the children 
looked so well and happy and clean; the others 
looked pale and frightened, bearing the marks 
of the inevitable filth diseases. The delousing 
clinic is still a thriving part of the institution. 
These children here seem worse than those 
who come through Evian. I have a new re- 
spect for a louse — I had no idea what mischief 
just one can do if left to roam about the hu- 
man head. I saw this afternoon some of the 
most awful sores and ulcers on heads and necks 
of these newly arrived children. 

One small boy, Henri, has lost one eye in 
the bombing of his village. One of the nurses 
told me that he is the naughtiest little rascal 
about the air fights; he wants to stand in the 
middle of the barrack square and watch it all. 
We have a detail of soldiers who guard us up 
there, giving the alarms and getting the chil- 
dren under cover as quickly as possible. 

I talked with one little woman whose only 
child has been very sick with pneumonia in the 
Red Cross hospital here. She has a small farm 
up near the line. It's spring almost ; she wants 
to prepare her ground. The Germans bomb 
her if she works in the daytime, and at night 



120 Tlie Children of France 

they throw gas bombs, but she shrugged her 
shoulders: "Je me fiche d'eux, je mets un 
masque et travaille dans I'obscurite" (I fool 
them, I wear a mask and work in the dark). 
Yes, she goes the six kilometers at night and 
carries on the work of her little farm. I had 
the feeling as I stood there in the sunshine 
listening to that little French woman, that to 
be able to care for her one small boy was worth 
the whole Red Cross hospital. I rather like 
the idea that the American Red Cross kept 
the son of such a mother alive, don't you? 

We came back to T just at sunset. It 

was almost warm ; the smell of earth was every- 
where and I had to talk vigorously with Mack 
about carburetors, of which I know nothing, 
to keep the thoughts of early spring at home 
out of my mind. 

As it grew dark the town seemed to have 
doubled its population, soldiers, soldiers every- 
where, and for the first time to-day no distant 
guns — a rather ominous silence. 

The siren sounded all through the dinner 
hour to-night, but no one noticed. I saw a 
man move a little away from the window, that 
was all. If the church bells ring, we have been 



And the Red Cross 121 

told to go to the caves in the cellar here. I 
keep wondering whether I'd rather dodge in 
the open and run the chances or sit in a dark 
cave expecting to be buried alive any moment. 

After dinner all was quiet for a time. B 

and I walked out into the little street to the 
fountain in the square, but it was so crowded 
with soldiers of all colors we came back to sit 
in the restaurant and write up the inspection 
reports by the dimmest of lights. 

It is difficult to do, there is so much going 
on. The waiter sends many drinks to the side- 
walk tables just outside and we hear the chat- 
ter of the soldiers, the rumble of the machines 
on the cobble stones, the laughter of children 
passing. It is a strange hour. Finally the big 
iron shutters have been slammed down and the 
street door closed. The officers still laugh and 
talk in the back room; two hungry cats dash 
madly about looking for food. Our proprie- 
tress, Madame X , leans on the counter 

and talks to her pretty daughter. A tired- 
looking little boy washes glasses behind the 
bar. Slowly the men are going out, some qui- 
etly, some noisily. The pretty dark-eyed 
daughter gets many salutes ! 



122 The Children of France 

Later. 

No, not a bomb, but some music — the sound 
of a drum roll I We rushed out into the black 
street to see. It was just seething with sol- 
diers pouring out of the little theater next 
door. We asked the bar boy and he said these 
are Moroccan troops "on repose here." They 
have suffered heavy losses and the town had 
given them a "theater party" as reward for 
good fighting. It was a weird scene ; the flash 
of pocket lights lighting up an occasional dark 
face with red fez above, the strange cries, the 
calling of numbers. For half an hour the 
street rang with calls and voices, little lights 
twinkling, people leaning from house win- 
dows, and finally in the dark the regiment 
foimed and marched away with bugle and 
drum. I came up here to my room to the little 
balcony to look down upon the bedlam. It was 
unbelievable in its strange significance. I have 
come back to the restaurant to tell you this. 
The chef and his assistants are now having 
their evening meal. It is ten-thirty. The 
street outside is quiet. I think we will get 
some sleep before guns begin. A strange 
world I 



And the Red Cross 123 



Somewhere in France, 
February — , 1918 

We did have a good night last night. I 
heard the siren several times, but it was quiet 
otherwise. To-day has been full of all kinds 
of impressions. This busy little war town fas- 
cinates me. 

This morning we walked through the wind- 
ing streets. The soft color of the walls, the 
vines hanging over, early spring blossoms in 
boxes here and there, made charming glimpses 
at every turn. We stepped into the cloisters 

of a beautiful church, Ste. G , so lovely 

with its fan-vaulting, and old, old, old; and 
then into the church itself with its lighted altar, 
the worn battle flags, and flowers everywhere. 
In the corner of the little nave was a rough 
wooden hut for the soldier's guard. Just be- 



124 The Children of France 

yond the church we met the cure driving in his 
little basket phaeton, his fine sweet face under 
his broad clerical hat, and his caped coat mak- 
ing an old painting out of him. 

We reached the cathedral square just as a 
bride with her soldier bridegroom drove up 
from the Hotel de Ville, with six of their fam- 
ily or friends. We followed them at a dis- 
tance through the great door of the cathedral, 
up the beautiful nave, and sat a little way from 
them. Two little altar boys in white with red 
capes came first and lighted the candles on the 
altar; then the priest in his beautiful vest- 
ments stood at the altar steps and the little 
bride and her soldier knelt before him with 
the others close behind them, and all through 
the brief ceremony the siren whistled loudly, 
but no one seemed to notice. The whole party 
went off with the priest to sign the register, 
while we strolled through the aisles, reading 
the touching war prayers and memorial tab- 
lets. There was one to a young aviator, "un 
pilote tombe pendant un heroique combat" 
("a pilot who fell in heroic action"). I sup- 
pose that means little white wads of cotton in 
a blue sky! 



And the Red Cross 125 

The cathedral is very beautiful, the old stone 
tracery so exquisite, but all sense of shelter 
and peace is gone. I kept thinking of what a 
splendid target it was in the landscape. Just 
as we came out, the scream of the siren sent us 
to cover in a "cave voutee," in a stable oppo- 
site the cathedral, where we waited until the 
firing ceased, and then walked back to the 
hotel. 

If only I could reproduce the little pictures 
of the life in the quaint door yards and shops ; 
at the open square a fruit stand with two peas- 
ant women and a nun in her black and white, 
talking earnestly ; close to them an old donkey 
braying his head off, a more terrible noise than 
the siren; and everywhere in the crowded 
streets our American soldiers ! 

The town is so picturesque it is most unreal. 
I feel as though it must be just a grand-opera 
stage and not war at all, but the siren keeps 
jolting me back into life. Just as we reached 
the hotel the tocsin sounded and the street 
cleared. We investigated the cellar and found 
the old concierge and four of the servants sit- 
ting in rustic garden chairs close to the rows 
of wine bottles. The old man is very nervous 



126 The Children of France 

and was eager to have us remain long after 
the "C'est fini, c'est fini" announced that the 
danger was over. 

As we sat at the sidewalk tables after lunch, 
a very dingy old man came up the street beat- 
ing a di-um. He stopped close to the foun- 
tain, beat very hard for a few moments and 
then in a loud voice read the law on the sub- 
ject of lights out at night and no street lights, 
or " the Boche will surely come." No one 
seemed to pay attention to him ; the army cars, 
the Red Cross ambulances, the heavy motor 
lorries rumbled by; the soldiers laughed and 
talked, all kinds of soldiers, French, Ameri- 
can, Italian, Algerians, Moroccan, East In- 
dians, Chinese — just the most unbelievable 
groups of men in the world. And all so gay 
and cheerful and in wonderful condition! A 
regiment coming back from the front-line 
trenches passed by, dirty, yes, but the most 
splendid, well-fed, happy-looking set of sol- 
diers you can imagine. I have been sort of 
nervous and anxious before coming here — the 
tension among civilians has been noticeable — 
but up here close to the real business the spirit 



And the Red Cross 127 

is wonderful. There is no fear here, I as- 
sure you. 

This afternoon we spent at the Hospital St. 

C . The French surgeon at the head, 

Docteur Pillon, has such a fine face, with a 
look of strength and sweetness about his eyes. 
He was gracious and kindly and so eager to 
show what was needed for his men. There 
are three hundred men in that hospital, with 
only fourteen nurses, so you can imagine the 
burden. Fifty thousand men have been in his 
operating room and he is in need of instru- 
ments. A wounded aviator was brought in 
while we were there, both legs fractured, and 
smashed jaws. When I come to such mo- 
ments I have such a strange feeling of exalta- 
tion sweep over me, and it is caused by the 
thought of those twenty-two million members 
of the American Red Cross at home. I won- 
der if you will ever realize what that has done 
over here, that backing. When we meet a 
need here, the American Red Cross says 
"Yes" instantly. No "hesitations," no "ifs." 
Twenty-two million Americans say yes to your 
need of instruments, Docteur; yes, to your 
wounded man from out the blue; yes, to the 



128 The Children of France 

women and children from bombed villages. 
Never again will I scorn the drudgery of mem- 
bership committees. Twenty-two million peo- 
ple behind the needs of our boys here for hos- 
pital care and comforts! Is it any wonder 
they walk these little streets of France with 
a confidence that is contagious, that has quick- 
ened these little towns with fresh courage and 
hope? 

I can't help writing this. I am so afraid the 
home people won't be told often enough what 
their Red Cross means over here; every one 
is so busy doing the work that few write of 
this feeling. I was talking with a French so- 
cial worker the other day, of the war and the 
different terrible crises they have passed 
through and the plight of the civilian popu- 
lations, and she said: "For us there has always 
been the miracle. Since the Marne we know 
that, however black the clouds, the miracle 
will happen. That's what we call the Ameri- 
can Red Cross, you know, our 'miracle of 
1917.' We saw no way through this winter 
until you came." 

Oh, my dear, do everything you can to make 
the people feel this at home. I must stop ; the 



And the Red Cross 129 

candle has burned too low to see. We are here 
waiting for papers to make the trip over the 
gassed villages in search of children, and to the 
first-aid dressing station just back of the line. 
We will probably get off Monday. 



130 The Children of France 



Somewhere in France, 
February — , 1918 

I didn't write yesterday; just rested. We 
went into the cathedral in the morning. It 
was crowded with soldiers. Then a long walk 
in the afternoon and early to bed for the trip 
to-day. 

All night long troops went through in the 
dark. I stood on my little balcony watching 
the moving mass of men marching through 
with only an occasional flash of light from a 
pocket lamp to show them the turn at the 
fountain. It seemed the most sinister thing, 
that moving of regiments in the dark. I 
watched for an hour and then went back to 
bed. The sound of marching feet went on 
until dawn. I could not sleep; I kept won- 
dering what the men thought as they went 
along in the darkness, so silent, men from all 



And the Red Cross 131 

over the world marching together against a 
common enemy. It was a thrilHng sound, 
those thousands of feet on the cobble stones. 
I feel that I shall never hear it again with- 
out the thought of that darkness last night. 

We left for the trip promptly this morn- 
ing. The French Colonel of the division gave 
us his car and provided us with gas masks. 
I think the latter make one rage even more 
than the submarine. Such a dirty, under- 
handed, sneaking kind of warfare forced on a 
civilized world ! The masks are an awful trial ; 
I certainly don't blame the children for refus- 
ing to wear them. 

It was a wonderful morning, sunny and 
warm after the awful cold of winter, and a 
look of spring in the fields. Of course we may 
have more snow, but it does not seem possible 
such days. It was perfectly quiet everywhere, 
not a sign of war; just beautiful rolling coun- 
try at the first glance; then we began to no- 
tice the clever camouflage of barbed wire, and 
entrances to communicating trenches. 

We stopped at the first village to get our 
escort, the officer who takes charge of you on 
such a trip and makes things as safe as pos- 



132 The Children of France 

sible. While waiting we stepped into an offi- 
cers' graveyard by the side of the road. There 
was a big shell hole near, but the gallant rows 
of crosses seemed to stand fearlessly in the 
sunshine. 

Our second errand was at M , where 

Section O, American Ambulance, were busy 
getting the picturesque old cowyard converted 
into a livable camp. The barracks were being 
cleaned with a right good will. There was 
much laughter and talk. Two big smiling 
boys were disinfecting the beds. I shall never 
forget the fun they were getting out of that 
disagreeable job. The rows of ambulances 
were under cover. There was no sign of a 
camp, just a farmyard, but these cars run be- 
tween the first-aid dressing stations and the 
base hospital. 

It was there I discovered with a jolt that 
we were within range of German guns; and 
from there on I noticed our road was screened. 
Here and there a section would be clear, but 
the sign "Ne pas stationner" (Do not linger 
here) sent our car leaping past the gaps with 
a speed that took your breath away. 

At every village we stopped and hunted 



And the Red C7'oss 183 

about among the ruins of little farm build- 
ings until \^ e found the few civilians, old men, 
women and a few older children clinging to 
cellars of what once was home to them. I can- 
not understand it. I know all the reasons why 
they stay, but I do not see how they stay; I 
feel I should go anywhere to get away from 
the guns and the gas. 

We stopped for lunch at the village of 
B . About half of the village was in com- 
plete ruins, the rest just sort of casually 
wrecked here and there. There were eight 
people left in the village, the Mayor, his wife 
and sister, the cure and his old mother, and 
three old men. The JVIayor begged us to eat 
with them in all that was left of his house — one 
low-ceilinged room with a big fireplace with its 
little iron crucifix on the mantelshelf. There 
was a low table in the middle of the room with 
long benches on either side, where we spread 
out our lunch, sardines and black bread. 
Such hospitality as that man and his wife 
offered us ! They begged us to eat their bread 
and save our own. We knew the bread they 
had was a strict ration and if we took it they 
would go without, but we ate of theirs and 



134 The "Children of France 

left ours on the table unnoticed in the formali- 
ties of departure. 

The restored church was the most poignant 
thing we saw there with its temporary roof 
built by the soldiers. And the most amusing 
person we met was the cure's mother. When 
she discovered that we were Americans she 
said: "Mais, vous n'etes pas noires . . . vous 
avez I'air de Fran9aises!" ("But you are not 
black, you look like French women"). 

We sped along the road some distance, not 
very far I should say, when a soldier seemed 
to come up out of the ground by the roadside 
where we slowed down to turn sharply to the 
right, to skirt what looked like a low green 
hill. I asked where he had come from and 
the French officer explained, from the front- 
line trench so many yards away! 

Yes, there I was within yards of Gennan 
trenches. I am going to disappoint you hor- 
ribly; I wasn't thrilled a bit; I was terrified, 
just completely terrified, and I had but one 
thought, and that was to turn the car around 
and fly for safety. But of course you don't do 
it — you go on. The car stopped, and pres- 
ently signs of movement on the side of that 



And the Red Cross 135 

green hill showed that we had reached some- 
thing. 

We got out of the car and walked across 
the little open space, and there it was — the 
First Aid Dressing Station. That small green 
hill was a human beehive, the home of many 
men connected with the battery there. It was 
the cleverest disguise you can imagine; you 
would never have noticed it a few yards away. 
It has never been shelled. 

The French surgeon showed us his little 
hospital in the hill, the room where the men 
receive first-aid treatment and bandages, each 
man given the tetanus toxin and then rushed 
back by ambulance to the nearest hospital. 
That clever doctor is constantly experiment- 
ing with the gas he catches in a trap, and he 
has saved hundreds of lives by his results in 
new protective measures. He has wonderful 
baths for his men there also, a fine big shower 
room built in the hillside. When the sector 
is quiet, men come back in relays from the 
trenches, have their baths, and go back clean. 

It was all perfectly amazing to me, the nor- 
mality of life attempted and achieved. I can't 
imagine taking a bath if I were in a front- 



186 The Children of France 

line trench opposite German trenches, and yet 
I saw in the two hours we were up there this 
afternoon dozens of men with their towels over 
their arms going back and forth to the show- 
ers, hot showers, mind you, and there was a 
recreation room also. 

The colonel of the battery had a concert for 
us — two violins and a 'cello, and the men 
played beautifully. It was all unbelievable. 
All the time the battery located somewhere 
behind us was firing the famous 75's over our 
heads! The colonel apologized for the noise; 
he said he would stop it, only it was their cus- 
tom at that hour to drop a few shells into the 
German trenches and he didn't want to dis- 
appoint any one! I disgraced my whole fam- 
ily, I suppose, by jumping every time a shell 
went over us, but it amused the poilus tremen- 
dously, so I don't care. I was frightened out 
of my wits and it was impossible not to show 
it. None of this was included in my education, 
— shells that you can't even see whizzing over 
your head had not been my idea of cannon 
balls. I thought them large, round, and black 
and perfectly visible in their flight, — just an 
old-fashioned gentlemanly performance. Now 



Aiid the Red Cross 137 

I know that a shell is simply two bangs a few 
seconds apart, and that you feel as if one were 
absolutely all you could bear. 

The poilus, bless them, kept me from run- 
ning; they were so smiling and careless, and 
so interested in us. I was so glad we had the 
car full of cigarettes. The gallantry, the 
bravery, the cheer of those men up there, I 
count the most precious impression of to-day — 
a whole little world in itself. 

I saw that little open rack on wheels in 
which the wounded are brought back from the 
trenches on the tiny track. Once it brought 
a dead man and the surgeon pointed to the left, 
and there the little track ran up to a wooded 
corner where the graves were, all carefully 
tended. Twice wounded men were brought 
in, treated and put gently into the ambulance 
by our American boys, and out on to the road 
and away. The sight did much to reconcile 
me to the noise of the 75 's. 

On our way back we visited three hospitals, 
all under fire, screened from the roads, and 
filled with wounded men. There are no women 
nurses in these French hospitals, and I longed 
for them. The men looked so uncomfortable 



138 The Children of France 

and the wards had that clumsy man look. 
Many of the men were septic ; oh, such terrible 
suffering and such cheerful j)atient faces ! 

How are we ever to forget the fact that the 
Germans homh hospitals? 

You can imagine that I am rather limp 

after the day. We came into T just at 

sunset; the siren was blowing and the firing 
from the forts was heavy. I surprised myself 
by not noticing it very much; it was all so 
mild after our day. Just a few minutes ago 
word came from our host at lunch that an hour 
after we left, the bombardment of his village 
began again and there is nothing left "ce soir." 
He had gotten away with his wife, and was 
"so thankful that the kind Americans had 
escaped." 

These beloved French people, they break 
your heart! Can you imagine thinking of the 
safety of some casual French visitors, if your 
village had been completely demolished and 
you had barely escaped? 

To-night I'd rather be an American Red 
Cross nurse in France than, well, than the 
Queen of Belgium I have been envying for 
three years! 



And the Bed Cross 139 



Somewhere in France, 
February — ,1918 

The day has been so tremendous, I doubt if 
there is any use beginning with this wobbly, 
half-burned candle that I blow out eveiy time 
the siren screams. We are having a lively; 
evening ! 

We left in a big gray car — 9807 — at nine 
this morning. We went spinning along the 

road from T to N , a wonderful road, 

not a war road but a park boulevard and most 
amazing! That road is kept in perfect condi- 
tion all the time. Troops move rapidly here, 
I assure you. 

N is a lovely old city, in a valley with 

wonderful hills all around it. We motored 
right to the beautiful square with its fine old 
buildings and gateways, where the splendid 



140 The Children of France 

Prefet has his office. Picking up his secretary 
there, we went out to see the big refugee home 
"Aiix Families refugiees des Villages Lor- 
raine." It has been a great friendly shelter 
for eight thousand women and children during 
the past four years and now it is to be evacu- 
ated. About twelve hundred women and 
children pass on this week to new shelters 
farther away, where it is safe. 

It is difficult to describe the sadness of the 
whole situation. These homeless people have 
come to love the big Caserne, its dormitories, 
kitchens, offices, all so neat and clean. As we 
talked with the women in the dormitories, their 
one constant question was: "When can we go 
home?" And to tell them that they are only 
going farther away from their little farms, was 
a most difficult task. 

These women had the most pathetic but 
amazing beds I ever saw. Most of them were 
piled high with their precious feather "puffs" 
we call them, which they had brought with 
them in their flight. Everywhere were the lit- 
tle evidences of their past, in an embroidered 
pillow-case or a bit of china on the shelf. 
INIany little porcelain JNIadoimas stood guard. 



^»?i."^„l!.l^l;|E_YARD DES BELGES. A LYON 




MADAME GILLET-MOTTE OF I.YON, WHO HAS DONE SO MUCH' FOR THE 
RAPATRIES, STANDING IN HER IIOOTH AT OUR CHILD WELFARE EX- 
HIBIT IN LYON, WITH THREE UNCLALMED CHILDREN. MADAME GILLET 
HAS CARED FOR 3,000 CHILDREN AND FOUND FAMILIES AND 
FRIENDS FOR THEM 



And the Bed Cross 141 

The women in that Caserne have been making 
sand bags during all these months. Two mil- 
lion sand bags in a year have been their con- 
tribution, besides yards of beautiful embroid- 
ery which has been sold. 

A thousand children and two hundred 
women, a sad weary procession must move, 
as spring comes on — the time for planting and 
the time of hope, — to far off places to wait. 
It is too bad; the great Prefet has done so 
much for his people here. 

After lunch at a cafe in the old square, we 
went off to the south to see some of the recon- 
struction work and to locate new dispensary 
sites. We passed village after village com- 
pletely destroyed; their beautiful old yellow 
stones and red tiled roofs all debris and holes ; 
and such lovely country! At last we came to 

Vitrimont, the little village Madame de B 

has been living in and helping to restore with 

Mrs. C 's generous funds. Our Red Cross 

Children's Hospital back at T holds a 

weekly dispensary there for the district. 
Nothing but a visit to the village could give 
the picture to you. 

First we asked for the Mayor, then for 



142 TJie Children of France 

JNIadame de B . A little boy ran off to 

tell the Mayor, who was working in his garden. 
He welcomed us warmly and began at once to 
show us the village. The houses are being 
restored with the same yellow stone, tiled roofs 
and high archways, preserving absolutely the 
original look of the village, with certain im- 
provements — such as sewage in the street — 
but still the fountains at either end, as before, 
where the village jugs are filled. 

The little church has been most beautifully 
restored just as it was before, and the ]Mayor 

spoke so feelingly of that. Madame de B 

married her French cavalry general there last 
fall, and the people feel that now this gracious 
American woman belongs to them forever. 

Then we went to see the Mayor's own little 
house, a new one, near the church. He has 
nothing left but his little dog. His wife was 

one of eight women killed by a bomb at L , 

where they had crowded into a church for 
safety. That tall fine looking man of sixty 
had a dignity about him that was most touch- 
ing. We walked slowly down, rather natu- 
rallj^ it seemed, to the heart of his grief — the 
little graveyard where the Germans had made 



And the Red Cross 143 

their trench right by the wall. It was difficult 
to sense the tragedy of it all. As you looked 
at the ruins and then off to the beautiful 
spring fields, you felt as though you had looked 
upon a murder. An old woman was sitting 
by the wall who had been there in 1870. She 
had escaped death then and now, she told us, 
but her beautiful village was gone. 

It is difficult to put into words what the 

sympathy and help of Madame de B has 

meant to those simple people. She has lived 
with them for over a year and they love her 
and cling to her, and show it in such pretty 
ways. Her little house is full of expressions 
of their feeling. Her citizen's paper pre- 
sented to her by the Mayor, hangs on the wall 
of her two-room house ; one of the village girls 
she has taught to sew and embroider, proudly 
but shyly pointed it out to me. 

From there, we flew still farther south along 
the highway through shelled villages to the old 
town of Gerbeviller, — up, up the winding 
street filled with debris, ruins everyhere, to 
the little convent and church which Sister Julie 
defended so heroically in that cruel attack on 
her beloved village. For over an hour she 



144 The Children of France 

told us the whole story of that martyrdom, her 
fine old face all ahght, twinkling now with 
humor, then a look of hon-or and sadness 
would pass across her eager face, then anger — 
oh, such flashing anger — as she told of her en- 
counter with the Germans when they tried to 
kill her wounded men. "Tous les gi-ands 
blesses sont freres" ("All wounded men are 
brothers") was her now famous challenge to 
the barbarians! 

Sister Julie and six of her nuns stayed under 
that cruel fire and cared for the wounded, and 
to hear the story from her was a rare experi- 
ence. She vivified the whole tragedy by the 
marvelous use of her hands as she talked. 

We came away most reluctantly, along the 
road past the temporary houses put up by the 
French Government, very good houses built 
more or less like the old ones. The dispensary 
service given by the American Fund for 
French Wounded and the Red Cross, under 

dear Dr. K , is a great one. That woman 

doctor is as beloved in Gerbeviller as Madame 

de B is in Vitrimont. I am feeling a bit 

proud of American women to-night. 

We came back through the stricken country 



And the Red Cross 145 

to N at top speed. Just as we whirled 

into the old square, we saw the crowd — a fallen 
German plane brought down by an anti-air- 
craft gun. It was a thrilling moment; just 
that grip at your heart until you were sure it 
was an enemy machine. It was just dusk; 
there was no time to stop if we were to make 

our hotel at T before things became lively. 

As it was, it did grow dark while we flew along 
the screened roads. We watched the signal 
lights for the airmen, saw the "evening stars" 
light up No Man's Land, like the strongest of 
electric lights. One could read a paper in our 
motor, with little eifort. It was quite dark 
when we came in, but every post expected us 
and passed us rapidly. 

And now things are lively. What do you 
do? Well, you just decide to go to bed, trust 
to the American, French, Italian and every 
kind of soldier you know is about, knowing 
that bombs are no respecters of persons or sol- 
diers ! 



146 Tlie Children of France 



Paris, 

March 2, 1918 

I SUPPOSE sooner or later you will notice in 
the American papers that the school children 
of every district in Paris are being provided 
with supplementary food by the American 
Red Cross, and that is true; but oh, it is not 
all! It began yesterday in the 14th district 
here, and I went with the doctors from the Bu- 
reau, the Mayor of the district, and the head of 
the Public Schools of the district, to watch it 
all begin in the different schools, and I am in 
despair at the thought of trjdng to put into 
words the delicate, exquisite expression of the 
gratitude of the children, and their eagerness 
about us Americans, and their delight over the 
Red Cross buns made in our own bake shop 
in the district, from a sj^ecially worked out 



And the Red Cross 147 

formula prepared by Dr. M who is in 

charge of the Paris work. 

The children had expressed themselves in 
many ways. At each school some welcoming 
poster greeted us: "Thanks to the American 
Red Cross" and "Welcome to our American 
granters," which was the quaint sign in Eng- 
lish at one school. 

At another, the art class had decorated the 
entire end of the big assembly hall, Washing- 
ton and Lafayette in gay blue wreaths with 
colored drawings on either side; one of an 
American Red Cross nurse helping a little 
child ; the other of an American woman giving 
buns and chocolate to the children. The cook- 
ing class at that school had prepared delicious 
custards made by magic without using any in- 
gi'edients forbidden by food regulations. The 
girls served it to us themselves and they were 
so pleased over our exclamations of delight. 
Their shining eyes and soft pink cheeks made 
even the palest of them pretty. 

Of com-se, the Red Cross bun for afternoon 
is only one part of our gift. All these schools 
have canteens for the children and the A.R.C. 
is giving ham, beef, lentils, beans, macaroni, 



148 The Children of France 

potatoes, rice, confiture, lard, cheese, sugar, 
peas, flour, milk — thousands of kilos of these 
foodstuffs. The Red Cross bun is just one 
little gift that permits of a bit of sentiment in 
its expression. 

In some of the schools the children had made 
tiny paper American flags and pinned them 
on the buns, and at another, paper flowers had 
been made and were presented to us, a pink 
rose bud as thanks for a fat looking bun. 

The neat little kitchen at another school had 
our flag on the chimney, and a bright faced 
French woman tried to thank the Americans 
for her little child. A kind American woman, 

a Mrs. S of Michigan, is paying for her 

little fatherless girl, and this hard working 
mother wanted to thank us for the kindness of 
one of our country women but she couldn't, 
she just sobbed into her clean apron. 

I can't give it to you in any order. It just 
remains with me as a most moving picture; 
hundreds of little children, the boys in their 
black aprons, the girls in checked dresses, and 
above them, shining eyes, smiles, and an eager- 
ness that choked me. 

At one school, before w^e distributed the 




DR. MURPHY AND DR. MANNING OF THE CHILDREN'S BUREAU FEEDINC 

THE SLEEPY, UNDER-NOURISHED CHILDREN OF THE "ECOLE MATER- 

NEI.I.E" in the EIGHTEENTH ARRONDISSEMENT OF PARIS 



And the Red Cross 149 

buns from the gaily decorated baskets, a little 
girl read quite clearly and distinctly in the 
prettiest of English, the following: 

"I am very happy to have been chosen to 
thank you for the new act of kindness which 
the American Red Cross is showing to the 
children of our schools. We are deeply 
moved at the thought that the United States 
do so much to help us in our great trial and 
that they even think of our little ones who will 
after the war be the builders of a renovated 
world. We feel sure that they and we w^ith 
them, will always be grateful to the noble Na- 
tion who out of pure Love of Justice and 
Right did not hesitate to enter this terrible 
war and support us by every means in its 
power." 

She was quite close to us and she knew her 
little speech well so that she was able to look 
at us with big star-like eyes as she spoke. All 
the other children, some four hundred of them, 
listened breathlessly with their eyes fastened 
upon us, as we listened to their little represen- 
tative. I don't believe I'll ever forget the 
tenseness of those momen'ts. All the little 
children of France seemed to confront us with 



150 The Children of France 

their clear eyes, and I was overwhelmed for a 
moment by the smallness of the American gift. 
But it isn't small, and they made us feel that 
it was ten times larger than it is. 

There was another tense moment when a 
teacher asked for a show of hands of those 
whose fathers were fighting. Many, many 
thin hands rose white against the blackboards ; 
but when the question was put, — how many 
whose fathers have fought, every hand went 

Oh, you may hear disgruntled ones criticize 
even the heroic French soldiers, but there can 
be no question about the contribution French 
children have made to this great cause. They 
have had to see everything in their home 
world changed and made difficult, often the 
giving up of their homes, giving up of their 
food and clothing and all the little gay things 
of childhood. That was what made a goose 
out of me yesterday; the real fun those chil- 
dren were getting out of our gift, the fun of 
thanking us. They sang our "Star Spangled 
Banner" in English, That was most amusing 
for them and very fine for us. They sang it 
with a real ringing zest that brought the tears. 



And the Red Cross 151 

They sang it in French and that interested 
them all. You could see the little ones who 
were not singing, listening to every word. 

At one of the girls' schools, two charming 
little girls of fourteen, I should say, holding 
American and French flags, recited this touch- 
ing tribute : 

HONNEUR A L'AMERIQUE 

"Salut a la noble Amerique 
Au peujde avec nous comhattant! 
Honneur a son geste hero'ique 
Et serrons la main qu'il nous tend. 
Comme aux grands jours de notre Histoire 
Que soient lies nos deux pays 
Et contre les Boches maudits 
Marchons ensemble a la Victoire! 

Debout contre la barbaric 
Marchons, luttons tous ardemment 
II faut pour sauver la Patrie, 
Terrasser le monstre allemand. 
Et nous pourrons revoir encore 
Sous le soleil longtemps voile 
Le grand etendard etoile 
S'unir g,u drapeau tricolore. 

Sous les drapeaux d* Amerique et de France 
Toujours unis par la Fraternite 
Nous combattrons pour notre delivrance 
Pour la Justice et pour la Liberie." 



152 The Children of France 

And when they had finished and we had 
clapped and called "Bravo, Bravo," the girl 
with the American flag stepped forward to say 
a special word of thanks in English. It was 
a great moment. She looked like a little 
Jeanne d'Arc, with her thick wavy hair cut 
short, beautiful hazel eyes, and flaming cheeks, 
and with our lovely flag furled around her. 
But it was too much; she could not remember 
the English. "We thank you" was all she 
could say. You know how undignified I can 
be at times; well, I just hugged her tight, flag 
and all, and assured her that we understood. 
There was no need for words. 

The school lunches of the American Red 
Cross in Paris will be recorded in kilos and 
packages, of course. To me, they will always 
suggest that little Jeanne d'Arc with our be- 
loved flag, saying "We thank you" for the 
children of France to the children at home. 




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And the Red Cross 158 



Chdteau des Holies, 
March 4, 1918 

I AM here again for a few days. It is sim- 
ply heavenly, like spring at home in New 
England, all earthy, and birds calling. The 
old greenliouses here are filled with wonderful 
blooms, and the whole landscape is a dream 
of soft green fields and feathery trees. All 
the windows and doors of the chateau stand 
open. The well children, or well-enough- 
children, are having their games and lessons 
out of doors; "courant d'air" is going to lose 
its terror for these children; they now ask to 
have the windows open, the nurses tell me. 
Violets are everywhere, and the children have 
filled my room with little squeezed-up bunches 
of them, and still bring more. They are so 
eager to give us something. 



154 The Children of France 

The whole place has been so happy for 
every one until three days ago. Of course 
every hospital, even convalescent ones, have 
to have deaths, but until now this wonderful 
old place has escaped. You remember the 
terrible sickness of little Albert at Christmas 
time? It seemed to us then that if he could 
get well, no child need die. Well, three lovely 
spring days ago, beloved little Jean-Baptiste 
went away "to mother" as Victoire said. Yes, 
my blessed little family of five that I have 
written you so much about is now four. The 
children came here from Evian to get well and 
strong and "wait for father," and after a 
month Cyr is sunburned and well. Victoire 
is now a normal little girl of twelve instead of 
an old woman. Juliette is positively fat, and 
Louis is all over his whooping cough and get- 
ting rosy again, but their baby Jean just 
couldn't. Pie had gone too far down, a war 
baby with four terrifying years lived through 
with all that means of neglect and privation. 
And he seemed to us to try so hard to get well; 
he loved everything and everybody. As for 
Victoire, she was his little mother. I don't 
believe any child of her own will ever be more 



And the Red Cross 155 

to her than this httle brother. And to make 
it all worse, the day Jean-Baptiste died, word 
came that father was alive and coming soon, 
and yesterday he arrived. We all feel that 
his coming just then saved Victoire. It was 
terrible for them all, but the four that are left 
are, in a way, more to the father than the last 
little son he had seen but once as a tiny 
baby, and the father's joy in them helped them 
over these first days, without Jean-Baptiste. 

Mr. G is a tall, splendid looking man, 

with dark, kindly eyes like Cyr's, and a smile 
that lights up his tired face whenever he looks 
at the children. He is so grateful to the hos- 
pital for the care of the children that it helped 
Dr. O to get over this first death. 

It is amazing the way this doctor felt, who 
had seen countless children die in hospitals at 
home. He kept saying to me the last days, 
"We have got to save this child. Why, his 
father is fighting up there in that hell to save 
the whole blooming world. We must save 
Jean-Baptiste for him." 

It's terribly real, this feeling over here of 
the great debt we owe — and it comes out con- 
stantly in unexpected places. I have watched 



156 The Children of France 

it at Evian, among the doctors and nurses in 
their fight to save some of those dreadfully 
sick children. I have never seen such tense- 
ness and determination, and children have been 
saved as though by miracles. I shall never 
forget the quiet rebuke I received last week 
when I was urging the Medecin-chef at the 
Evian hospital to spare himself a little ; he was 
fairly staggering with fatigue, having exam- 
ined some seven hundred children daily besides 
carrying the service of the two hundred bed 
hospital. He looked at me almost sternly and 
answered, "You forget these are the children 
of the men who said 'They shall not pass,' and 
they didn't pass." A very simple, real state- 
ment. That's just the difference between the 
children here and the children at home as yet. 
These are the loved ones of the men of the 
Marne, of Verdun, and these kiddies are now 
just about five times as precious to the life of 
the nation as they were before the war. So 
little Jean was very precious, and this happy 
old place is sad to-day. 

But a beautiful thing was revealed by the 
little lad's death. You remember how difficult 
it has been to win the old servants we acquired 



And the Red Cross 157 

with the chateau, especially old Jean, the 
butler? Well, I think no one is sadder to-day 
than Jean. He loves the children now and all 
the staff, I think, and it was old Jean who 
made the little spot of earth all green and full 
of blooms before Victoire took her father there 
this afternoon. And to-night, Jean asked 
our doctor most anxiously whether he thought 
the Red Cross would ever want to put a 
younger man in his place. Dr. O an- 
swered, "Why, do you like it here, Jean?" 
Jean hesitated a moment — he is a reserved old 

man — then he put his arm around Dr. O 's 

shoulder, and with the tears rolling down his 
cheeks, said, "Never so much as now, M. le 
Docteur, this is the best of my life." I think 
he will stay to the end. The only quarrels 
we ever have "below stairs" now are caused by 
endless argmnents as to which one of them is 
to do some particular thing for either the chil- 
dren or the staff. 

The ambulance men talk of the "Victory of 
les Halles" as the only fight they have been in. 

As dear H said this afternoon, "It helps 

me to wait for that military assignment." 
H , you know, has at last been accepted 



158 The Children of France 

by the army. We are all glad for him. He 
is so anxious to go. He confided to me long 
ago, when I was making perfectly futile ef- 
forts to comfort him, "You don't understand, 

Mrs. . How'd I feel goin' back home 

when this business is over and the only kind of 
powder I could talk about would be 'talcutrt'?" 
The disgust in his voice was monumental. I 
stopped arguing. 



And the Red Cross 159 



Lyon, 

March 6, 1918 

I FEEL all ground up into bits to-day. I have 
been visiting munition factories! Now, don't 
expect me to describe all the shells and things 
I saw in the process of making. I could not 
do it. I recognized the shells when they began 
to look like shells, but I didn't recognize any 
of the early stages of munition making. The 
manager tried to explain to me the intricacies 
of the small charges that are put into these 
big shells. I tried desperately to follow, but 
I found when I came away that I could not de- 
scribe the process. 

But I have certain impressions that are so 
deep I'll never forget them. 

I have a feeling for oil to-night that is inde- 
scribable ; it is in my nose, my mouth, my eyes, 
my hair, all over my shoes, my uniform. The 



160 The Children of France 

long sheds were filled with machinery and 
workers. Eight thousand women standing 
shoulder to shoulder with six thousand men, 
seemed to blur before you in the general whirl 
of oil. It was everywhere. It seemed to be 
the medium that molded that thundering build- 
ing into one great machine. That is one of 
my deepest impressions. 

Then it was just noise; such a noise that 
struck you all over, not only in the ears, but 
in your heart, you felt all thumpy and throb- 
bing. I could not hear anything that was said 
to me — just this terrible roar of machinery. 

Then it was just speed. Every section I 
looked at was flying at such rapidity, I could 
not distinguish human worker from the oily 
monster she worked with. I could not breathe. 
Hands and levers flashed back and forth; 
things moved everywhere; chain racks holding 
shells rolled constantly overhead — half finished 
shells, finished shells, red hot shells, cool shells 
•■^-everything moved. All those human beings 
working at an unthinkable speed were becom- 
ing part of that tremendous output of might 
against the enemy. It was a long time before 
I could seem to take in any of the detail. 



And the Red Cross 161 

Then I began to see faces — individual faces of 
the men and women; and I saw through the 
oil and the grime the same cheerfulness, the 
same determination, that I felt among the 
poilus at the front. It was unexpected. So 
many people talk about the awfulness of every- 
thing, of war, of women in munitions, of any 
labor connected with the present situation. 
Now you know I am not a feminist, or a mili- 
tant suffragist; I am just one of thousands of 
college women who are thinking about things. 
And I didn't feel the depression I expected. 
Those people seemed to be working with a 
spirit that is higher than any wage or condi- 
tion. There seemed to be just the same glori- 
ous dash I felt when close to the French front. 
That factory was a great big vital line of de- 
fense, and the workers seemed to be filled with 
the spirit of fighting men and armies, and it 
all looked worth while. 

I know there is a big serious side to the situ- 
ation^ — the sacrifice of the child life of the 
country — but for these heroic women there 
was no choice; isn't any choice yet. These 
munition factories are the whole miLst of the 
situation, and the women know it. I hope my 



162 The Children of France 

country will hurry with our own munitions. 
The quicker we are, the sooner the women of 
France and England can have a choice. In 
the meantime everything is being done by Gov- 
ernment and Red Cross and Y. W. C. A. to 
help the women and their children. The fac- 
tory I have been in to-day has a big canteen 
for its workers, a fine hospital and dispensary. 
There are over three hundred minor accidents 
a day. I saw some of them and to me they 
seemed major, but the Verdun standard of 
things as we call it in France is bewildering. 

To watch a woman handling those red hot 
shells, swinging them quickly into position in 
the proper machinery without dropping them, 
makes you hold your breath. You know be- 
ginners do drop them occasionally. 

But in spite of all I was thrilled by the 
sights of the day; the creche for the children, 
the rooms set aside for the mothers to nurse 
their babies, the infinite care of the French 
Government! The women receive an alloca- 
tion of one franc a day for a month before the 
birth of a child, and for six weeks after, one 
franc, fifty centimes, and this helps so much, 
for the women have a chance to rest. 



And the Red Cross 163 

I feel to-night that the children of the eight 
hundred thousand women in munition factories 
in France have a very special claim on us. 

The Y. W. C. A. have their splendid club- 
house for the women workers here, and it was 
an amazing experience to face that crowded 
hall during the noon hour to-day, and hear 
those women sing their beloved songs! So 
many of them looked so young, most of them 
looked strong, and they all looked happy and 
cheerful. That is what has stirred me so. I 
expected depressing sadness; I found a splen- 
did, glowing spirit of service. 

The Red Cross work in this city includes 
visiting nursing care for children of those 
women, and help in the crowded clinics of the 
city, besides the hospitals for our Evian chil- 
dren. 

In one of the sheds where twenty five thou- 
sand shells a day are turned out, I spoke to a 
fine looking woman of about forty, with oil 
streaked face. "I worked outside the first two 
years, but since my two boys went I came in 
here. I feel nearer them here," she said. A 
new point of contact for shells ! Yes, I think 
that is the reason for this spirit. Those shells 



164 The Children of France 

are their message to the front line trenches, 
the answers of the women of France to the 
enemy of their country, the message of faith 
and confidence to their own fighting men. I 
have heard so much of "shell shock," I can't 
tell you what a feeling this new sense of "shell 
comfort" gives me. 



And the Red Cross 165 



Somewhere in France, 
March 11, 1918 

I can't tell you where this is because it is 
U. S. Army, but I must tell you the experi- 
ence. We got out at the dark station at two 
o'clock this morning, after a "sit up" sleep 
from Paris. It is a wonderful station, hun- 
dreds and hundreds of men on the platforms, 
coming and going, for this is the station for the 
Verdun front, and it always thrills me. The 
biggest French Red Cross canteen is here; it 
holds three or four thousand men. We went in 
for a while and watched the poilus at the long 
tables. The happy cheer of it all must help 
them to go on back to the job they have so 
well in hand. In the inky blackness we found 
the Grand Hotel de la Cloche, but no room, 
"pas de chambre," the night concierge in- 



166 The Children of France 

formed us; but he gave us permission to try 
the hard, narrow sofas in the salon, which we 
did most gratefully. Every once in a while as 
the night w^ore on I would hear B march- 
ing around trying to keep his feet warm, he 
said, and to get the crick out of his neck. The 
sofa arms, hard and narrow, were the only 
pillows. 

But it was a "beautiful mornin' by the grace 
of God," and we were stirring early, walking 
out to the central Camouflage factory before 
nine o'clock. Our American officers want the 
American Red Cross to give them a creche for 
the children and babies of the seven or eight 
hundred women who work in the factory, and 
we came down to plan it with them. I love 
to think that our men thought of it, and asked 
for such a thing for the little French children. 

It is a most amazing place. We went to the 
open sheds where they color the thousands 
upon thousands of meters of burlap. The 
material is unrolled on the ground and women 
paint with big brooms; tlic paint is water color 
and smells like a cheese factory. The ground, 
the workers, the buildings, the very sky itself, 
seemed covered with green, yellow, brown. 



And the Red Cross 167 

brown, yellow, green mixtures. It is terrible 
stuff to work with, so wet, so messy, and so 
smelly. Then the burlap is hung in the sheds 
to dry. These long sheds stand right in the 
open country, with great fields all around, 
level, with the spring green coming on. The 
new buildings have all been built in the last 
six weeks. 

The women are of all ages, many old, old 
women working in the long sheds, and many 
women of child-bearing age. The need for a 
creche is great, as many women must continue 
to nurse their babies, and there must be some 
place free from paint! 

As we stood in the sunshine in the big wet 
fields, we could see the long shed covered with 
green where the paint is thrown on the burlap, 
— one hundred thousand quarts of paint in 
eight hours is the record. Outside, the women 
roll and unroll the stuff to dry or to paint. 
Then there is the long, low barracks where the 
women work on the burlap after it is diy. In 
one it is tied to the wire netting cut in differ- 
ent stated lengths. In another, bunches of 
different colored raffia are tied together and 
then tied to the wire. In another, the burlap 



168 The Children of France 

is cut to look like trees and foliage. One bar- 
rack is given over to the sculptors; "trench 
heads" are made there, strong soldier heads 
leaning forward slightly ; rows of them deeply- 
colored look like real men. 

The children are very much in the way there, 
but many women cannot work unless they 
bring the children. Well, their work is for 
the protection of our soldier boys. We must 
help with their children. So the plan is com- 
plete, and will be carried out toute suite. 

A big, roomy barrack in the fields will be 
fitted up for the children, with a trained aide 
in charge. Lt. D. E. W. from Texas is the 
medical officer here, and he went over the plans 
with us and will give us his help and interest. 
If you could have seen him, standing there, 
tall and straight in the sunlight, with that look 
in his keen eyes under the wide brim of his hat, 
like cattle ranchers you see in the West; his 
slow drawl, his quiet manners, and his bigness! 

The men all love him, K said, and he is a 

fine doctor. The children love him, too. We 
feel safe about the creche under his keen super- 
vision. 

I love this armv of ours that has come to 



And the Red Cross 169 

help and doesn't forget the children. The 
Red Cross is eager to carry out every wish of 
our men for anything they feel is needed by 
them, or by the civilians they see. 



170 The Children of France 



Paris, 

March 15, 1918 

A RATHER bad day. At one-thirty a terri- 
ble explosion. I was alone in my room and 
the first thought was a day air raid. Then a 
second explosion and crashing of glass in the 
street. It sounded very near and I stood 
waiting, not knowing what to do. The third 
bang and more glass falling; then silence. 
When I could move, I went to find out what 
it was. There was great excitement, a hand 

grenade factory at had blown up and 

fire had started. 

The Red Cross acted quickly. We knew 
it meant death for many and injury for thou- 
sands of women and children cut by flying 
glass. All the afternoon our nurses and doc- 
tors have worked near the scene of the tragedy, 



And the Red Cross 171 

as near as the police could allow. Many build- 
ings are unsafe and hundreds are homeless. 
Late to-night the Red Cross had a two hun- 
dred bed hotel ready for the women and chil- 
dren who could be brought into the city. The 
fire is burning still, and smaller explosions take 
place as the flames spread. We fear an air 
raid to-night, as the fire will light up the coun- 
try for miles and if this is all treachery to- 
day, the enemy will not lose such an oppor- 
tunity unless the rain saves us. Those poor 
children this afternoon, many of them so badly 
cut and bruised, and all so frightened! The 
explosion broke hundreds of windows in Paris 
seven miles away. You can imagine what it 
felt like to be a block from the factories. Our 
chief nurse came in late this evening looking 
as though she had been in a coal mine, her 
face black with smoke and soot, and so full 
of the agony of it all. Of course this is but 
an accident of war, but if you could have seen 
those children out there this afternoon you 
would never forget. In a street not far from 
the disaster we found an old woman sitting on 
the curbstone, bleeding badly from superficial 
cuts on face and hands, her three grand- 



172 The Children of France 

children sitting close to her, all of them with 
glass wounds, but none of them crying. The 
grandmother was dazed but calm. She said 
both the father and mother of the children were 
in the factories. She had heard nothing from 
them, but she was hoping they were alive be- 
cause the explosion began during the noon 
hour and she thought they might not have been 
in the factory. Our nurse wanted her to come 
to a safe place with the children, but she re- 
fused to leave the street in front of their tene- 
ment home in case they came to find her. 
Such pluck! The building has been con- 
demned and the people are not allowed to 
enter, but they cling to the streets. The 
French are so kind always in their treatment 
of their people. They are rushing temporary 
shelters out, tents, blankets, and mattresses, so 
the people can stay near their possessions. 



And the Red Cross 173 



Paris, 

March 16, 1918 

I SPENT the morning in our children's clinic 
at Grenelle. We did not have a raid last 
night, thanks to a heavy rain. But many peo- 
ple of the poorer districts spent most of yester- 
day after the explosion in the "Caves," not 
knowing what it was, and when they did know, 
fearing further trouble. So the clinic was 
crowded this morning with women and their 
tired, sick children. 

One starved looking mother with a tiny baby 
had spent the time in a very damp cellar and 
both of them had terrible colds. I shall never 
forget the picture of the care they received. 
Our nurse was so fine, so sympathetic, and as 
she worked, the mother told her many things. 
The baby was her only one and her man was in 



174 The Children of France 

the trenches. His permission was due very 
soon and nothing must happen to his baby. 
You feel so sorry for these poor people dur- 
ing these air raids. The air is full of rumors 
about that "offensive" promised by the Ger- 
mans, and all the women in that clinic this 
morning were busy discussing its probability. 
They said: "If it begins, there will be no more 
permissions for a time." And these women, 
hard at work here, with the children to care 
for, live for their men to come home. One 
woman in very shabby black, lost her man last 
week and she looked as though she would never 
smile again, and yet no bitterness ! Her little 
boy of six has a bad bronchitis, but he is a 
sturdy little chap and she told me, without a 
quiver, that she wished he were big enough to 
take his father's place at Verdun. "We must 
finish," she said— "finish!" 

At that clinic we have a small day nursery 
or creche for the children whose mothers are 
working, and a regular kindergartner ( I hope 
some one will think up a non-German word 
for that) teaches the children and they have 
the best of times. We are proud of the 
Grenelle center; it is a real neighborhood 




THE GREAT RESPONSIBILITY. GRANDFATHER AND GRANDMOTHER WITH 

SMALL BOY OF FOUR WHOSE MOTHER HAS BEEN HELD BY THE 

GERMANS 



And the Red Cross 175 

house, small, with a staff of four, doctor, nurse, 
aide and French teacher, to meet the needs of 
their neighbors. The French are good neigh- 
bors. I asked a tired poilu at the Gare du 
T^ord last night, why he kept on fighting. 
Four years, he told me, he has been in the war, 
and he was very tired, but his answer to my 
question was a wonderful one: "We've got to 
show those Germans how to be neighbors; 
they don't know how to live next to other 
people." 



176 The Children of France 



Paris, 

March 2S, 1918 

At eight o'clock this morning began the 
bombardment of Paris! It seems unbeliev- 
able, and no one knew it as a fact until about 
three this afternoon. Then the rumor was 
confirmed. It had been very strange all day; 
the explosions seemed to come about every 
twenty minutes. In Place , sixteen peo- 
ple were reported killed and injured at noon 
time. At one o'clock a terrific bang seemed 
to have struck very near, "in the Tuileries," 
our small office page reported. Every one 
looked up into the blue sky for the answer to 
the puzzle. After the miserable raid last night 
our minds thought only of "Avions." But at 
three o'clock the word from the war office 
came, — a long distance gun! Well, if guns 



^ind the Red Cross 177 

can fire seventy-five miles, I imagine v^^e are 
in for a warm time of it. The children of this 
city ! What can we do to help, where can they 
go to play, or to work, or to do anything else 
— if a shell is going to drop every twenty min- 
utes? The news from the front is bad to- 
night; the offensive is on hot and heavy, and 
it is a breathless moment here. Late this 
afternoon after an hour of quiet, I walked out 

to Dr. B 's hospital, A.R.C. No. 1. The 

beautiful Champs Elysees, always crowded 
with the French children laughing and play- 
ing, rolling hoops and riding the ponies, was 
all silent, empty; just busy, preoccupied grown 
ups went hurriedly on their way. It is only 
eight o'clock, but it is a clear night. A raid 
is inevitable. I think I'll have a nap before 
undressing. 



178 The Children of France 



Paris, 

Palm Simday, 1918 

From nine last evening until midnight, the 
raid went on. We sat in the dark on the 
Entresol, talking of that western front; the 
raids make us seem nearer it. The Allies are 
giving up ground. We had a telegram yes- 
terday announcing the giving up and destruc- 
tion of our little ten bed hospital for children 
at Nesle. "All out safely," but where? We 

do not know. They say to-night that H 

has been taken. It does not seem possible. 
The guns began at seven this morning. We 
all needed an alarm clock after the niglht. 
Breakfast was served very daintily in the cel- 
lar of this hotel for the dining room here is a 
glass covered courtroom, and no one wants to 
sit under glass. The shells have dropped 



And the Red Cross 179 

every twelve minutes to-day. The morale of 
the people is wonderful. Children must be 
looked out for, yes, but the rest of the French 
shrug their shoulders. They are perfectly 
calm and confident ! There must be two guns ! 



180 The Children of France 



Paris, 

March 28, 1918 

A BLACK day — perhaps the blackest in our 
history. The whole world waits; rumors ebb 
and flow. The retreat goes on, the gun goes 
on, the raids go on, but the A. R. C. has just 
one thought — to do everything in its power to 
meet the emergency. Our Children's Bureau 
is deep in the work for the refugee women and 
children pouring into the city from the north. 
The stations receiving them are now manned 
with doctors, nurses and aides, to help the 
French handle this terrible situation. The 
canteens go all night; the trains are bringing 
thousands of the old and sick men and women, 
women with their children, from the region we 
thought safe. They are weary and hungry 
but not in a panic. It is marvelous. Last 



And the Red Cross 181 

night in the station I saw a tired woman feed- 
ing a five months' old baby sweet chocolate. 
The baby was happy but the mother knew 
that was wrong. We found that in the flight, 
and terror of those days, her milk had stopped. 
In a few minutes our doctor discovered four- 
teen other mothers in the same condition. Our 
nurses prepared milk formulas for the babies 
all night and all day, as the morning trains 
brought more. The people are being carried 
through to towns and cities farther south now. 
Paris is no place to keep them. The raids 
make the station work so difficult, as we have 
to get them down under ground. The chil- 
dren are tired and dirty, and sick some of 
them, but they do not seem frightened. The 
Red Cross is cooperating with French nurses 
and Government in removing as many children 
as possible from Paris. Workers from the 
war zone pour in, but the French are confident. 



182 The Children of Frarwe 



Paris, 

Good Friday, 1918 

A BUSY day, not a moment for anything but 
emergencies. The retreat goes on. The wo- 
men and children pour into the stations from 
the north. Two little frail children died at 
the Gare du Nord this afternoon. It was 
awful, but the mothers were wonderful. One 
woman said this was the third time she had 
lost everything in flight, but still she smiled 
bravely through her tears. The French and 
American Red Cross are working hand in 
hand these days. The rush at the canteens 
and rest rooms at the stations has made heavy 
work and we are eager not to have the soldier 
canteens suffer, as the stations are crowded 
with troops on their way to the front. The 
gun began just at three this afternoon and the 



And the Red Cross 183 

rumors are bad. The first shell struck a 
church and the evening papers say over ninety 
people were killed, mostly women and chil- 
dren. I have no direct word as yet. 



184 The Children of France 



Paris, 

Easter Sunday, 1918 

The gun was quiet this morning, and the 
news from the front is good. The Allies are 
holding. Bishop McCormick of Western 
Michigan preached a sermon that would make 
him famous if he were not already so. His 
text was, "As cold water to thirsty lips, so is 
good news from a far country." It was all 
sort of choking and tremendous but it sent us 
back to the railroad stations with fresh courage. 
Refugees, women and children, continue to 
pour into Paris and all organizations, both 
French and American, are uniting in the effort 
to move them on to peace and safety south of 
Paris. 

One little disheveled woman at the Gare du 
Nord, with three sturdy boys clinging to her, 



And the Red Cross 185 

told me how an American soldier helped her 
to get out of Amiens in his camion, where the 
bombardment was "terrifique." I suppose it 
was one of our Ambulance men, but her grati- 
tude was as great as though the entire Ameri- 
can Army had escorted her to Paris. Oh, for 
ten million men! — But the Allies are holding! 
I think we can stand the air raid to-night with 
actual delight. Three shells from "Bertha 
Krupp" late this afternon, but Paris seemed 
to be smiling. The boulevards were crowded. 
The fact that it was Easter overshadowed even 
the long distance guns. A wonderful people! 



186 The Children of France 



Paris, 

April 6, 1918 

A WEEK of shells, air raids, night hours in 
the cellar, work in the day time, but no one 
minds. The Allies are still holding. 

A wonderful new work has been developing 
in the Children's Bureau this week. Long be- 
fore Christmas you remember our soldier boys 
began doing many things for the children they 
came into touch with in the villages. In 
every little French town where our boys are 
quartered, the village children had a Christmas 
party with the American soldiers. Constantly 
we have received money from our soldiers "for 
the kids." The "Stars and Stripes" (the 
newspaper for the U. S. troops) decided that 
it might be a good plan to organize that feeling 
and give the boys a wider field in which to ex- 



And the Red Cross 187 

press their friendliness for the little children 
they see. The newspaper asked us if we 
would take the trouble and the responsibility 
of providing French children for our American 
companies to "father" and "brother." You 
can imagine our delight. We said that the 
American Red Cross could supply any kind 
of French children, with hair of any color, or 
eyes of any color, for our boys to be interested 
in. The plan suggested by the paper on Palm 
Sunday was that five hundred francs or one 
hundred dollars be the sum given by the men 
for a year's contribution to the care, education, 
or useful training of any kind, for a French 
child; the application of the money to be left 
to the discretion of the Children's Bureau of 
the A. R. C. 

The response from our men was immediate. 
In ten days twenty children have been 
"adopted" by our soldiers. They have sent 
their money, and the "dimensions" they 
wanted, and we have supplied the child, that 
is, we apply the money and we furnish the 
company with the photograph of their child, 
his history and how they can keep in touch 
with him. 



188 The Children of France 

Several days ago we had a letter from Com- 
pany G, — Regiment of U. S. They wrote 
as follows: 

^'Company G met Easter morning. 
We want to adopt a little hoy of six with 
blue eyes, the son of a man who fell at 
Verdun/' 

They are not difficult to find — little sons of 
men who fell at Verdun! We found Henri, 
a darling laddie with blue eyes. We had 
him photographed at once and his picture and 

his history sent to the company. Miss P , 

in writing of Henri, said that he had two 
brothers and two sisters. To-day we received 
the answer: 

^'Company G takes the whole bunch/' 

I love it. I think one of tfte most beautiful 
things in France to-day is the feeling our men 
have for the devastated lives of the little chil- 
dren. I don't suppose many of the men could 
say anything about it but this is what they 
are doing, in their simple, direct way. Some 




WAITING FOR SOME ONE TO COME FOR HER. 
AT THE HOSPITAL AT 



LUCILE, 
EVTAN 



A LITTLE RAPATRIE 



And the Red Cross 189 

of the letters are so funny. One company 
wrote : "You pick out the kid, but please have 
it old enough to eat anything the fellows want 
to send it." I suppose they feared a "bottle" 
baby. 

But it is all so big and fine, and coming at 
this time when we are all breathless with 
anxiety, it is like "the wind on the heath." 



190 The Children of France 



Port in France, 
April 27, 1918 

We have been here for two days. We sail 
some time to-night. It is difficult to believe 
that we are going home for a few weeks, after 
the ten busy months here. I have been sitting 
out on deck in the dark sort of listening to 
my own thoughts, and I find that the A. R. C. 
seems to be just two factors to me: our soldier 
boys and the little children. When we left 
Paris on Friday, eighty children had been 
adopted by eighty American companies, and 
the letters continue to make one laugh and 
cry. To-night I stood and watched from our 
deck the unloading of a big ship next to us at 
the wharf. The country was all dark; the 
wharf was lighted by torches that moved about, 
here and there; now deep black shadows, now 



And the Red Cross 191 

whole vivid scenes flashed out for seconds at a 
time. 

Once, the flash showed a line of poilus drawn 
up close to the wharf to welcome the troops 
from home; then the light revealed a group 
of excited little children close to the ship's 
gangway; and down that gangway moved a 
constant stream of soldiers. Their broad brim 
hats, (the American hat,) made the familiar 
silhouette against the dark sky when a torch 
cast the light just there, and as each company 
reached the soil of France, they gave a cheer, 
a real American cheer, that thrilled us to the 
core. Then childish voices called "Vive la 
France! Vive I'Amerique!" and again our 
boys* ringing cheer, and presently a com- 
pany's band began "Over There," only to be 
drowned out by a united roar from all the 
men on the wharf. "Sheer animal spirits," 
said some one near me, and I think my whole 
ten months in France rose up within me and 
said, No ! Those cheers were hoarse with feel- 
ing. I knew those men were choked by a 
spiritual exaltation that will grow and grow 
as we have seen it grow in other men from 
home during these months here. Sending 



192 The Children of France 

their money into our Bureau for the children! 
What is that but their way, their simple prac- 
tical way, of recognizing the spiritual signifi- 
cance of their fight for the future, for the 
safety of the world, for the little children? 

An American newspaper woman was dis- 
cussing some of the finer issues of our struggle 
with a British Army officer at the front. She 
spoke rather depressingly about the material- 
istic trend of the world, the apparent failure 
of things spiritual, the rather Godless state of 
the universe. The officer listened quietly for 
a time and then, looking her straight in the 
eyes, answered: "Stay in the front line trenches 
awhile. We believe in God like Hell up here !" 
And our boys, many of them before they have 
reached the front line trenches, have shown 
their ''faithr 

Last week at the Beauvais Canteen, just 
back of that awful retreat, a wounded Ameri- 
can soldier came in with head bandaged, blood 
and mud staining his cheeks. It was natural 
that the Red Cross worker should turn eagerly 
to him to find out what he wanted. But in 
front of that rough counter stood a row of little 
refugee children waiting for milk. The 



And the Bed Cross 193 

American lad waved the worker aside, with: 
*'I can wait. Kids first, please." 

And France has heard that note and will 
never forget that the American Soldiers and 
the American Red Cross came to her help with 
those rough boyish words in their hearts, "Kids 
first, please." 



